RSL says One Nation’s Hastie ‘slur’ was an ‘attack on every veteran’s service’ – as it happened

That’s a wrap on our live coverage for today! Before we say bye, let’s recap the day’s top headlines. Former prime minister Kevin Rudd did the rounds in Canberra today for a round of high-profile speeches this week, marking his return to Australia after serving as ambassador to Washington DC. The South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, has warned the Albanese government not to join the “madness” of cutting migration to appease One Nation. Victorian premier, Ben Carroll, has backed the warnings. Andrew Hastie has continued to step up the fight against One Nation, after one of its cartoon Please Explain videos referred to the Liberal MP and SAS veteran as a “traitor” after he gave evidence against Ben Roberts-Smith in his failed defamation claim. Jacqui Lambie, an independent senator and defence veteran, has also joined the criticism against Pauline Hanson . Moira Deeming, the former Victorian Liberal MP, has announced she will lead the conservative Family First party at the November state election. Angus Taylor has confirmed the Coalition won’t support the government’s digital duty of care bill in its current form, because it would enforce political censorship. A controversial plan for the Minns government to allow big industry to use a new Great Koala national park to offset its climate pollution will go ahead after a deal with the Greens. Australian-first laws that guarantee the right to work from home two days a week are unlikely to pass Victorian parliament before the November state election, with the Coalition and crossbench teaming up to refer the bill to an inquiry. The high court has refused with costs an appeal by women-only app Giggle against a full federal court ruling in May that upheld a landmark decision that the app and its founder, Sall Grover unlawfully discriminated against Roxanne Tickle after the transgender woman was denied access to the platform. And finally, here’s a Tl;dr on what happened in question time. Thanks for sticking around, we’ll see you tomorrow morning! Victorian premier says Liberals have shown ‘true colours’ on work from home The Victorian premier, Ben Carroll, says the Liberals have “shown their true colours” by voting with crossbenchers to refer work from home laws to a parliamentary inquiry. After pretending to support our work from home laws all the way along, the Liberal party have teamed up with the One Nation party and voted our work from home laws down … This legislation has been in the Parliament for three months. I met with the business community and made it fair for families and fair for employers. The Liberal party and Jess Wilson have shown their true colours. The inquiry will report back on 20 October, a few weeks before the government enters caretaker mode. Carroll indicated he would not recall parliament, saying he already added an extra week: I’ve already added a week to get all of our integrity legislation through. It was always designed to be going through this week, I delayed to get the business community the consultation they wanted. The Liberal Party had been very clear: we will pass this. And what have they done? Behind Victorians’ backs, behind the government’s back, done a sneaky deal with One Nation. If you needed any more proof that the Liberal Party are anti-worker, look what they did right now to working women, to working families that work hard every day and just want the right to work from home. VIC Property Council welcomes delays to the WFH Bill The Property Council has welcomed delays the Victoria’s national-leading work from home bill after the Coalition and crossbenchers decided to refer it to an inquiry, effectively stalling it until after the election. The organisation said the draft legislation requires “further scrutiny given the complexity and legal challenges it presents to all Victorians.” In a statement, Victorian Executive Director Cath Evans said the decision was the only correct choice. The Victorian Parliament has seen sense. Instead of forcing rushed legislation through Parliament, it has made the right call by sending the Bill to a Committee to properly examine its operation, implications and legal validity. Referring the Bill to a Committee gives the Parliament the opportunity to methodically examine all of the legal and economic issues associated with the Bill. This decision should be the clearest signal: the Victorian Government needs to be focused on the things that will actually drive growth - building more homes, creating jobs, attracting investment and restoring confidence in the state. We hope this is the beginning of a more constructive approach to addressing the economic issues facing Victoria, and a government that listens to business and recognises that employers and employees are best placed to agree on arrangements that work for them.” Boats seized, mud crabs freed in seafood sting Boats have been seized and mud crabs freed in a crackdown on black market seafood trafficking, AAP reports. Three boats will be destroyed after successful prosecutions involving illegal seafood trafficking in Moreton Bay, the Gold Coast and Brisbane. Two offenders were caught by Queensland Boating and Fisheries Patrol officers selling seafood outside the state’s commercial fishing system. A Russell Island man was fined $10,000 for black market sales of mud crabs, king threadfin salmon and mulloway. Officers also located 139 protected bivalve molluscs and an undersized mud crab in his possession. The man was ordered to forfeit the vessel and associated equipment. It follows two other successful prosecutions of illegal seafood harvesting in southeast Queensland, with all three forfeited vessels to be crushed. Officers executed a search warrant and seized his vessel, trailer, outboard motor and marine electronics. Deputy Director-General Fisheries and Forestry Pauline Jacob said the offenders weren’t simply catching a few extra fish for dinner. She said: They were profiting from Queensland’s fisheries resources through ongoing illegal seafood sales that undermine honest commercial fishers and legitimate seafood businesses. She said licensed commercial fishers invest heavily to meet strict licensing, sustainability and food safety requirements. Black market operators avoid those costs while undercutting businesses that do the right thing. Queenslanders deserve confidence that the seafood they buy has been legally harvested, responsibly managed and supplied through legitimate businesses. Australia’s largest veteran support group has warned calling veterans traitors is a “slur” and an attack on every veteran’s service. It follows a bitter rift between the Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie and the One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, after the latter refused to apologise for a cartoon her party published that labelled Hastie a “traitor”. In a statement this afternoon, the Returned & Services League of Australia, better known as RSL Australia, said using the word sends a “corrosive message to the wider veteran community” that “your service can be recast as betrayal the moment it’s politically convenient”. The statement said: The recent comments from Senator Hanson towards Andrew Hastie MP go beyond political disagreement. This may have begun as a political dispute between Senator Hanson and Mr Hastie, however, when a person’s military service is used as the punchline, when the word ‘traitor’ is thrown at someone who has worn the uniform and deployed on operations, that stops being politics and starts being an attack on every veteran’s service. Veterans don’t stop being accountable to their oath once they leave the ADF. Branding a former soldier a ‘traitor’ sends a corrosive message to the wider veteran community: that your service can be recast as betrayal the moment it’s politically convenient. RSL Australia asks all sides of politics to keep that distinction. Calling a veteran a traitor is a slur, and it deserves to be treated as one regardless of who it’s aimed at or how it’s dressed up.” Read more: The high court has refused with costs an appeal by women-only app Giggle against a full federal court ruling in May that upheld a landmark decision that the app and its founder, Sall Grover unlawfully discriminated against Roxanne Tickle after the transgender woman was denied access to the platform. The full court had upheld the lower court’s decision that Giggle and Grover had indirectly discriminated against Tickle when she was barred from the platform because they thought she was a man. The full court doubled the initial amount of damages awarded to Tickle to $20,000. Grover’s team had argued the app – designed as a “women-only safe space” – constituted a “special measure” under the Sex Discrimination Act (SDA), which allows discrimination with the aim of redressing historical disadvantage between men and women. The high court said there was “no reason to doubt” the full court’s construction of the relevant sections of the Sex Discrimination Act, and any appeal on these provisions “has insufficient prospects of success” to warrant granting a special leave to appeal the case to the high court. It brings to an end the long-running legal saga, which commenced in 2022. The opposition leader, Angus Taylor, said in May in a video posted to social media featuring Grover, that the Coalition was committed to “amending the Sex Discrimination Act to ensure protections for single-sex spaces are based on biological sex,” if elected. Australian-first laws that guarantee the right to work from home two days a week are unlikely to pass Victorian parliament before the November state election, with the Coalition and crossbench teaming up to refer the bill to an inquiry. The laws were first announced in 2025 by the then premier Jacinta Allan in a bid to capitalise on the backlash to the federal Coalition’s plan to force public servants back into the office full-time, which contributed to their election loss. The Victorian Coalition, though, had said it would support the bill and expected it would pass parliament on Thursday. But in a shock development, the Coalition has joined with crossbench MPs, including Legalise Cannabis, David Limbrick from the Libertarians, former Liberal MP Moira Deeming and One Nation’s Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell to refer the bill to an inquiry that effectively stalls it until after the election. The inquiry was put forward by Shooters, Fishers and Farmers MP Jeff Bourman and passed 18 votes to 17. Thank you all so much for joining me on the politics blog this week! I’ll leave you with the fabulous Achol Arok and see you here bright and early Monday. The PM’s honorary membership at a golf club that received $6m in funding from an invite-only grants program was a focus of question time today, including why a Daily Telegraph article from 2019 highlighted the honorary membership but the PM claimed he didn’t know he even had it. Anthony Albanese ended up ignoring several of the questions and gave somewhat unrelated answers. Independents Sophie Scamps and Helen Haines asked the government why Australia won’t join partners including the UK in implementing a trade ban on Israeli settlements in the West Bank – Albanese and Richard Marles repeated the same lines that Penny Wong gave yesterday. Two MPs – Nationals MP Kevin Hogan and Labor backbencher Basem Abdo – were kicked out in the middle of a question to Jim Chalmers about government debt bonds. Department denies dereliction of duties over alleged AI hallucinations in submission on social media ban Last month, the federal infrastructure department was quizzed in a Senate inquiry over claims made in a submission to the social media ban amendment bill that alleged citation errors identified in the age assurance technology trial report were AI hallucinations. It was aired just before we published our story identifying several errors in the report. At the time, officials relayed the claims by ACCS - the age verification organisation that undertook the trial - that the errors were due to links breaking in the intervening time between the report publication and the hearing. Senator Fatima Payman queried in her dissenting report of the inquiry whether officials had been derelict in their duty in not independently verifying the advice provided by ACCS at the time. The department’s secretary, Jim Betts, said in a letter to the committee chair, tabled this week, that officials are not failing in their duties if they give evidence “based on advice provided to them that, at face value, can be accepted as accurate”. Betts said: The representations made by officials were based on information available to them at the time and were honestly and reasonably held. Betts said the department had continued to investigate since then. The department said ACCS had since provided new citations to replace the erroneous ones and would correct the report online. ACCS has denied the citation errors were AI hallucinations. The department declined to answer further questions on the report. After a final question to the prime minister, Anthony Albanese calls time on QT for the week. Coalition tries to pin Albanese on golf club membership Take two – Anthony Albanese is asked again how the Daily Telegraph knew about his honorary membership in 2019 but he didn’t, and asks if it’s just “another case of you falling off a stage?” The inference there is that Albanese is lying about the membership and doesn’t want to own up to it (like when he tried to deny that he fell off a stage during the last election campaign). Albanese once again does his absolute best to totally avoid the question. He says the article was related to a 2019 campaign to save the golf course from future development, and does a little copy and paste from a previous answer where he said that of the Coalition’s 2025 election promises, not one was for Sydney’s inner west. I certainly supported it as did people throughout the area of the inner west either side of the Cooks River, because this is an absolutely vital and precious piece of the inner west, of Sydney. The manager of opposition business, Dan Tehan, tries to table the article to parliament, but leader of the House, Tony Burke rejects the attempt, and says it’s already online. Richard Marles offers no further insight on position over Israeli settlements The independent MP Helen Haines asks: what will it take for Australia to join our allies in imposing trade bans on Israeli settlements in the West Bank? This time the deputy PM Richard Marles takes the question and sheds no further light on the issue than when Anthony Albanese was asked about it a short time ago. Multiple nations, including the UK, have announced they’ll implement bans on trade from illegal settlements. Marles says the Australian government supports a two-state solution, and illegal settlements are hindering that, but that targeted sanctions on individuals and entities are still the answer. Because of the positions that we have taken, we have put in place sanctions and bans in respect of those that have been participating in the settler – settlements – in the territories, and that has included Israeli ministers themselves. We will continue to look at further targeted measures, working collaboratively with our allies and partners around the world in respect of this issue. Albanese dodges question on 2019 report of honorary membership in golf club The opposition has come with receipts, asking how a Daily Telegraph article from 2019 reported that Anthony Albanese was an honorary member of the Marrickville golf club but the prime minister himself didn’t know until now. A Coalition MP shouts asking if Toto is a member too, to which Albanese replies, smiling: “Don’t attack Toto, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.” The prime minister doesn’t really answer the question. He goes off on a bit of a tangent, saying that the golf club wasn’t even in his electorate in 2019, and that he has the second-smallest electorate in the country. There is very little green space in my electorate, and I defends every inch of it. In 2019, the Marrickville golf course was not in my electorate. It was actually in the electorate of Barton. The prime minister is again on the back foot, defending a $6m grant given to the Marrickville golf club, which he was an honorary member of. Yesterday Anthony Albanese said the money was to stop sewerage from the club ending up in the Cooks River. Liberal frontbencher Tony Pasin asks if the PM mislead parliament because $1m was used on stormwater works, but $4.55m was spent on a clubhouse precinct. Albanese provides a pretty short answer, and doesn’t address the substance of the question, but basically does confirm that part of the funding, not all of it, was for the sewerage works. There were three commitments in my electorate. One for a women’s health centre, the one for a St Vincent de Paul facility, a refuge, for women and children escaping domestic violence, and one for the upgrade of the inner west council–owned Marrickville golf club. Included in that was funding to fix the sewerage because it goes into the river and causes a problem when it floods. Albanese defends not declaring golf club membership Liberal frontbencher Angie Bell is next and asks the prime minister why he hasn’t declared his honorary membership of the Marrickville golf club when he did declare honorary membership of the Royal Sydney golf club. The former received $6m under an invite-only grants program that gave the majority of funding to safe, marginal or target Labor seats. Spoiler alert: the opposition intervenes three times because they’re not happy with the answer. Anthony Albanese says it’s because he knew about one (Royal Sydney) but didn’t know about the other, and doesn’t even have a card for the Marrickville club. Albanese then tries to turn the attention back to the Coalition, and says he took a look at all the opposition’s 2025 election funding promises (which some staff member would have spent many hours trying to pour through). I looked through the list of Coalition election commitments from 2025 and there were over 1,000 projects worth $1.2bn. I looked for anything in Grayndler and of the thousand projects, there wasn’t a single one in the inner west, not one. The independent MP Sophie Scamps asks: why hasn’t Australia joined with the UK and ten other countries to ban trade with Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank? Anthony Albanese won’t give a firm answer, but says (as the foreign minister, Penny Wong has already announced) that there will be stronger sanctions on Israeli individuals. He basically says the same things that Wong has stated, that Australia has concerns about unintended consequences from a “blanket-style” ban. These sanctions target extremist settlers and entities including settlements responsible for horrific violence and human rights’ abuses. As the foreign minister announced, we are pursuing further, targeted measures in coordination with our international partners, to deter illegal settlements and deter settler violence. Our aim is clear: to take action to ensure the two–state solution remains viable as it is the only pathway for peace and security in the region. Two MPs booted as Chalmers asked about government debt The shadow treasurer, Tim Wilson is up next asking why debt as a proportion of GDP is increasing under Labor and if the government will concede that’s leading to higher interest rates. About halfway through Jim Chalmers’ answer (which we’ll come back to in a sec), Milton Dick boots Nationals frontbencher Kevin Hogan and Labor MP Basem Abdo for their non-stop interrupting. Chalmers says his budgets have been better than the Coalition’s and that “I will compare this any day with the shameful record of those opposite.” The Coalition tries to make a point of order on relevance, but Milton Dick says Wilson asked a broader-than-normal question, which means he gets a broader-than-normal answer. Chalmers says there are a bunch of factors involved in determining debt, including the war in Iran. I was explaining where the debt came from: overwhelmingly from the former government. Angus Taylor starts off at the despatch box today, and asks how many Australians owe more money to the bank than their house is currently worth – ie are in negative equity? He says: “Data today shows half of all homes bought in Melbourne and Sydney in the past 12 months are now worth less than what Australians paid for them.” The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, takes the question, and says that the reserve bank governor recently said that negative equity in Australian housing is “very limited”. To quote the Reserve Bank governor, she said this: ‘The most recent data suggests that notwithstanding the price falls, negative equity remains very limited affecting less than one per cent of borrowers’, and we saw again in the earnings data released by the Commonwealth Bank in August, which showed that just 0.5% of the Commonwealth Bank book was in negative equity. The opposition tries to make a point of order on relevance, but the speaker, Milton Dick, rejects it and says he won’t take “frivolous” points of order. Chalmers decides to take a more personal jab at the opposition. Earlier than usual in question time, [it’s] the daily reminder that the Coalition was doing better under Sussan Ley than under this opposition leader. Jacqui Lambie has escalated her attack on Pauline Hanson over the One Nation cartoon video that labelled Andrew Hastie a “traitor”. Lambie, a Tasmanian crossbencher and army veteran, has unleashed a slew of insults at Hanson and accused her of not having achieved anything during her time in parliament. The independent senator also says Hanson delayed the establishment into the royal commission on defence and veterans’ suicides. Speaking to News24, Lambie is at one point brought to tears: This is the same woman, the same woman that held our royal commission up for veterans. All she wanted, she said, no you can just have a commissioner, that’s what Pauline Hanson did to us. We waited nearly six more months to get that through. So you know what? She’s no friend of a veteran … Don’t attack veterans, and you don’t stand like a coward behind your goddamn cartoons, which I can tell you that in itself, they are shocking. [Hastie’s] come from Special Air Services, mate, the SAS. Only the best of the best get in there, and by god, they’ve got to be the toughest, and the country asks them to do so much more than anybody else can imagine. So you bloody show … respect to Hastie because I tell you what, he’s bloody earned it. Leave him alone. Lambie says Hanson is deliberately dividing the country rather than uniting it. She’s dividing this country … she’s an angry little woman with so much baggage on her, that everybody else and her supporters think that is acceptable behaviour, and think it’s everybody else’s fault besides theirs. More on Lambie’s position here: In pictures: pub choir comes to parliament Politicians across the divide put down the political playbook and picked up a music score instead, this morning singing from the same song sheet for the parliamentary pub choir. I’m told they sang Weather with You by Crowded House – a pub classic! One Nation video ‘contemptible’ and ‘lowest of low’: Canavan Jumping back to the earlier Coalition press conference, the Nationals leader, Matt Canavan, was also asked about the One Nation cartoon video and said it was “contemptible” to call anyone who has served the nation a traitor. Canavan said the it was difficult for Pauline Hanson to distance herself from labelling Andrew Hastie a traitor because the video was branded and authorised by her party. He also called for the video to be taken down. It’s, I think, contemptible to call anybody that’s served our nation those words … It was the lowest of low political acts, particularly from people who haven’t served themselves. Now they’re distancing themselves from it, it’s like ‘oh it’s not us, we didn’t say it’. Well it’s got their branding all over it, it’s authorised by them, give me a break. The main public-sector union has appointed a new national secretary after its former head Melissa Donnelly was named the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ secretary last month. This morning, the Community and Public Sector Union’s deputy secretary, Rebecca Fawcett, was promoted to national secretary. Fawcett worked as the CPSU’s lead in the first round of APS-wide bargaining and played a role in the Your Rights at Work campaign against the Howard government’s WorkChoices laws in the mid-2000s. Fawcett said: CPSU members do essential work for the Australian community every single day. They deserve secure jobs, fair pay, safe workplaces, and public services that are properly staffed, properly funded and properly valued. Together, we have won important improvements, but there is more to do. We will keep fighting to bring public sector work back in-house, strengthen protections around AI and automated decision-making, and make sure workers have the pay and conditions they need during a cost-of-living crisis. Carbon credits for native forests bill expected to pass, despite Greens split The plan to allow states to earn carbon credits for protecting native forests that had been earmarked for logging is expected to pass the Senate despite three Greens crossing the floor. It will be backed by Labor, seven Greens and other crossbenchers, including independents David Pocock and Lidia Thorpe. The vote has been brought forward to this afternoon. The Greens leader, Larissa Waters, said in a statement that the party would support the disputed carbon credit method after improving it, but would oppose other upcoming carbon credit legislation that would produce a larger number of credits. The fight against Labor’s carbon credit greenwashing starts with the Greens opposing 40% of the offsets used by these big polluters to hide their emissions. For years, Labor has created a system that allows big polluters to buy get-out-of-jail-free cards instead of cutting their emissions, and the consequences of this broken system are being felt around the country by communities living with the floods, fires and heatwaves. That ends now. Waters did not directly address in the statement that three senators would cross the floor. The Greens said the deal with Labor would ensure credits from a native forest project could not be sold to coal and gas companies if the state government promised that would be the case. The NSW premier Chris Minns said this for the koala park, but his commitment was not legally enforceable. Other changes include an increase in how much logging has to be reduced in an area for a project to qualify for any carbon credits – rising from 20% to 30% from 2030 – and closing a loophole that could have been used to classify regrowing native forests as a loggable plantation. Back on the fight inside the Greens over the use of carbon credits to create a koala park that we mentioned earlier – three Greens senators have declared they will cross the floor and vote with the Coalition against the deal the minor party reached with Labor. Tasmanians Nick McKim and Vanessa Bleyer and Western Australian Jordon Steele-John said they did not support the carbon credit method that lets states earn carbon credits for protecting native forests that had been earmarked for logging and would vote “according to our consciences”. As we have reported, the issue has sharply divided the party and the broader environment. In a statement, the trio said “people of good heart and clear mind can, and have come to a different position on this issue”” We understand the position that others have taken, and we hope they can understand ours. We want Greens members and supporters to know that we do not support the relentless commodification of nature, and will not be part of making it easier and cheaper for big carbon polluters to keep emitting as [this method] does. Majority believe government moving too slowly on domestic violence, polling shows Nearly three quarters of Australians believe the federal government has been moving too slowly on domestic violence, while just over a quarter (27%) of Australians believe the federal government’s response to recent high-profile gender-based violence instances has been adequate, according to new polls. Polling for the Women and Girls’ emergency centre, conducted in July and September, of more than 1,000 Australians shows the majority believe the government isn’t doing enough to curb domestic violence and would support an increase in funding for services. The July poll found 71% Australians believe Labor has responded either “much too slowly” or “somewhat too slowly” to domestic and family violence. Nicole Yade, the chief executive of WAGEC, said two years after the government declared domestic and family violence as a national crisis, “Australians are clear that the pace of change does not match the scale of the crisis”: The message from the community is simple – Australians are saying enough is enough. Action simply cannot wait until after yet another woman or child is harmed. These results that show that the response to the devastating headlines that have dominated the news over recent weeks simply does not meet the moment. Tanya Plibersek delivered this speech yesterday responding to the sobering results of Australia’s latest domestic, family and sexual violence report, released yesterday. Greens call on Labor to abandon gas reservation plan and legislate gas export tax The Greens say Labor should ditch the gas reservation plan – which will require producers to hold up to 20% of their production for domestic use – and slap on a 25% gas export tax instead. The government this morning released draft legislation for the scheme, with a slight watering down of the requirement from producers to hold a firm one-fifth of produce to “up to 20%”. The Greens have been on this train for an export tax for a while – and just a few months ago so was seemingly every second person on social media (recall David Pocock’s viral video asking department officials why Australia makes more revenue from the beer tax than the petroleum resource rent tax). The government says the reservation scheme will lower power bills, but Greens senator Steph Hodgins-May says it “won’t raise a cent for Australian households”: When gas corporations say jump, Labor asks how high. Now the 20% reservation requirement is being watered down to appease the gas industry. A gas export tax does what Labor claims its reservation scheme will do, but it also raises revenue to compensate Australians who have seen gas prices triple since exports started a decade ago … A gas export tax would raise at least $17bn a year. That’s our gas and our money. A controversial plan for the Minns government to allow big industry to use a new Great Koala national park to offset its climate pollution will go ahead after the Greens reached a deal with Labor, and decided not to vote with the Coalition to block it. The minor party and environment advocates have been divided over a regulation introduced by the Albanese government that lets state governments earn carbon credits for protecting native forests that had been earmarked for logging. The Nationals want to kill the regulation, known as a carbon credit method, on the grounds it would hurt the forestry industry. They have introduced a disallowance motion scheduled in the Senate next Tuesday. The Greens have the casting votes. They want the park – a promised 476,000 hectare reserve, including 176,000 ha of newly protected areas - but have been divided over whether it should be allowed to happen this way. They reached a decision this morning to allow the carbon credit to stand. The details of the deal with Labor are expected shortly. More to come then. You can read more about the issue here: NSW police rule out connections between fatal Punchbowl shooting and recent two shootings NSW police have said a fatal shooting in Sydney on Wednesday night does not appear connected to recent fatalities allegedly related to an “ongoing feud” between “two organised crime networks”, but the victim was known to police. A man was fatally shot in the car park of a Punchbowl community centre in the city’s southwest on Wednesday evening. Police have said that a car was spotted driving away from the scene. In a press conference about the incident on Thursday, acting assistant commissioner Grant Taylor, told reporters the “shooting does not have the same hallmarks as the other shootings that have occurred over the last several months.” He said: This shooting appears to be an individual person acting alone at this stage. We don’t believe in the infancy of its investigation that it does relate to the ongoing feud between the two organised crime networks you are aware of. The person who was killed last night is known to us. He is known to the Queensland police service. There are links to outlaw motorcycle gangs, and it’s not impossible that that’s why he was killed. The fatal shooting comes two days after the New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, announced measures to curb gangland violence in Sydney. New laws being introduced in the state include new aggravated offences for conspiracy to commit gang-related murder. The maximum penalty will be increased to life imprisonment. Last week, police confirmed that shootings in Glen Alpine on Tuesday and in Merrylands on Wednesday were both being investigated as mistaken identity killings by organised crime groups. The Victorian premier, Ben Carroll, says he backs his South Australian counterpart Peter Malinauskas’ impassioned defence of migration. Malinauskas said in a speech in Sydney last night that populism has well and truly arrived in Australia and the government should push back against it – and said this morning that Labor should be speaking more positively about migration. Carroll told reporters at parliament this morning that he had recently discussed the issue with Malinauskas and they were on the same page: If you look at the Victorian economy, if you look at the entrepreneurs, look at the small business leaders – overwhelmingly, they have been migrants that have come here. We know a strong, diverse economy is essential for Victoria’s prosperity and its future. Whether it’s our healthcare professionals, whether it’s our labourers, whether it’s the people that are working on our farms … strong diverse growth is so critically important, and we do need to make sure that we have an economist view when discussing immigration, because we want to grow our economy and we want to make sure that we have the workforce that will sustain our economy and our population. Asked whether he agreed with Malinauskas that the debate around cutting immigration was a race to the bottom with One Nation, Carroll said people needed to be “more sensitive” that they were sending the wrong signals to the rest of the world. In Victoria, our biggest export is international education. We send the wrong signals to China, to India, that international students don’t matter. It doesn’t matter what you change at the commonwealth level; the signal itself can have a real chilling effect on our economic growth. So we’re proud that we treat our international students as if they’re members of our own family. Bowen says no backdown gas reservation – but it’s starting late Circling back to the revised plan to reserve up to 20% of locally produced gas for Australian use, Chris Bowen says it’s not a backdown but a few key elements have changed. The reservation will now kick in from July 2028 instead of July 2027, which the government said would align with companies’ cargo planning. The resources minister will have discretion to cut companies’ supply obligations all the way to zero if they wish. Bowen said: Some people said to us in feedback ‘make sure you don’t oversupply the market so much that it’s counterproductive’. The government says the reserve should push prices down but Bowen said it was not setting any target or ceiling on prices. They have also split out the west coast market from the east coast market. The resources minister, Madeleine King, said the government was not looking to mess up Western Australia’s reservation and would release the state from federal obligations if it was already well supplied. King said: If they are working through that well, then they should be able to continue to do that. Taylor says Albanese should have registered honorary golf club membership Angus Taylor says the prime minister should have publicly disclosed his honorary membership of the Marrickville golf club which received $6m in funding as part of an invite-only grants program. Anthony Albanese says he only recently became aware of the honorary membership and someone had “apparently” given it to him back in 2012. Upon my last check a couple of minutes ago, the PM hasn’t updated his register to include the membership. Full yearly membership is $1,100 a year while a two-year social membership is $5 according to the ABC. Taylor said: I think that’s clear, they’re the rules. He should register his interests. He should have registered his interests. The Coalition opposes Labor’s plan to give extra powers to the eSafety commissioner As we mentioned earlier, the Coalition is voting against the government’s separate bill that increases powers for the eSafety commissioner, including to request documents from tech platforms to ensure they’re complying with the under-16s social media ban. So there are two bills being discussed here – the digital duty of care bill and the increased powers for the eSafety commissioner for the social media ban. The Coalition says both give the commissioner and the government too much power: What we don’t support is giving strong, unfettered powers, frankly, to either the minister or the government or the eSafety commissioner. We don’t support that … Freedom of speech matters. Yes, absolutely, we must protect our children, we must protect Australians against undue harm. But it cannot be at the expense of – or allow political censorship, and that is exactly what is being allowed in this bill. I draw your attention to section 25(c). It’s extraordinary how much discretion the minister has in this explanatory draft and that’s unacceptable. On the duty of care bill, Liberal senator Sarah Henderson is asked if there are any changes that could be negotiated to make those ministerial powers more palatable. Short answer: not really. She says: I have no confidence in this prime minister to remove the really offensive parts of this bill. This is open-ended. There are no safeguards. Taylor says Hanson taking down ‘traitor’ cartoon is not censorship The Coalition says the government’s digital duty of care bill should not infringe on free speech, so Angus Taylor is asked how he can then justify ordering Pauline Hanson to take down a cartoon labelling Andrew Hastie a traitor. Taylor says he’s not suggesting that it should be illegal for the cartoon video to be put up in the first place, but doubles down that the post in question should be deleted. Andrew Hastie served this country with distinction as a member of the Special Forces, the SAS. He served this country with distinction. I think it’s wrong, and I have every right to say that I think it’s wrong for that video to be up. Now, in the end, this is not a question of legality, this is a question of morality. Angus Taylor says Pauline Hanson should immediately take down a cartoon that labelled Andrew Hastie a traitor for giving evidence against Ben Roberts-Smith in his failed defamation trial. Hanson has claimed she didn’t call Hastie a “traitor”, but has left the One Nation cartoon video on her social media account for more than a month. Taylor defended his frontbencher, telling journalists: She should take it down. Andrew Hastie has served this country with distinction as an officer in the SAS. She should take it down. Angus Taylor has confirmed the Coalition won’t support the government’s digital duty of care bill in its current form, because it would enforce political censorship. Speaking alongside the Nationals leader, Matt Canavan (who has gone out particularly hard against this legislation), and the shadow communications minister, Sarah Henderson, Taylor says the government’s can’t be trusted with these rules. The opposition has said the government has too many powers to broaden the definitions of harm that tech platforms will have to protect adults and children against. The government has said any changes will be able to be rejected by the Senate. Taylor says: This exposure draft, this bill, is unacceptable in its current form because the reality is it’s providing a blank cheque for political censorship to the minister, to the government. Canavan adds: I don’t want to see a government be given a virtual iron dome to protect themselves and insulate themselves from people’s feedback. The Labor party, in recent weeks, has blamed an election loss in Western Australia on social media and so the people, the same people that are complaining they’re losing elections, losing political debates based on what is said on social media, can’t be given the power then to regulate what you can say and read online. After the South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, sternly warned his federal counterparts against engaging in a race to the bottom with One Nation by drastically cutting migration, the assistant multicultural minister, Julian Hill, says that won’t happen. Malinauskas said in a speech in Sydney last night that populism has well and truly arrived in Australia and the government should push back against it – and said this morning that Labor should be speaking more positively about migration. Speaking to RN Breakfast earlier this morning, Hill says Labor has learned its lesson already … with the Greens. I learnt this 20 years ago. You can’t outgreen the Greens. If we say 10, they’ll say 20. We say 20, they’ll say 40. It’s a populist business model. The government has no intention of engaging in a race to the bottom that would destroy the economy or, frankly, smash family life for millions of Australians across our country. Greens support strengthened powers for eSafety commissioner on social media ban The Senate is currently voting on the government’s bill to increase the powers of the eSafety commissioner in her quest to crack down on tech platforms breaching the under-16s social media ban. The government sold it as pretty uncontroversial legislation that gives the commissioner powers like being able to compel more hard evidence like paper documents from tech platforms to show they’re doing the right thing. The Greens are voting for the government amendments to the legislation, but the Coalition aren’t. Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young says: It’s very hard, of course, to implement any of these rules if these companies can keep their tricks and tactics locked down in secret, it’s why we need proper transparency when it comes to exactly what is going on what is happening under the hoods of these toxic algorithms. Moira Deeming, the former Victorian Liberal MP, has announced she will lead the conservative Family First party at the November state election. Joined by the party’s leader, Lyle Shelton, at parliament this morning, Deeming told reporters Family First was a “good fit”. A lot of parties invited me [to join] … and it was very flattering and very gracious to them all. But I had to have a really good think about it. And as I said, I’ve known Lyle for so long, and I know that he’s a man of good character and I know that he’s never going to ask me to be quiet about child safeguards and sex-based rights. Deeming, who sits in the upper house for the Western Metropolitan Region, quit the Liberals in July after she was disendorsed by the party. It came after she accused fellow Liberal MP Matthew Guy of grabbing her “violently” in a headlock, but later said she misunderstood the meaning of headlock. Her first term in Victorian state parliament has been marred with controversy, including when she successfully sued former Liberal leader John Pesutto for defamation after he falsely claimed she was associated with neo-Nazis who crashed a rally she attended. Jumping back to that press conference on the national gas reservation scheme, the government says it’s long overdue. Tim Ayres says: We are the only gas producing economy in the world on any scale that does not have an obligation on our domestic producers to secure gas for our own industry and its own households Madeleine King says that the east coast and west coast will be treated as two different markets. Why? Because they currently produce gas separately and there’s no connecting pipeline between them, which means the east coast won’t be able to fill their reservation requirements just by selling to the west and vice versa. Hanson says she has never called Hastie a traitor Pauline Hanson was tight-lipped on her way into parliament this morning when swamped by journalists at the doors. This is all she said: I have never called him a traitor. End of question. Andrew Hastie has said Hanson should take ownership for the language in the One Nation cartoon, which is pinned to the top of her X account. Labor confirms watering down of gas reservation plan The government will require gas producers to save “up to” one-fifth of their production for the local market instead of a hard 20%, in a watering down of the policy. Labor is releasing the draft legislation for the scheme this morning - the energy minister, Chris Bowen, industry minister Tim Ayres and resources minister, Madeleine King, are holding a press conference. Here was the original plan, where the government said an oversupply of domestic gas would help to reduce prices for households and businesses. But now the government has slightly changed its tune after consultation. Bowen says: There is an obligation to supply gas to Australian industry. But there are other things where we’ve had suggestions about how we can effectively achieve that modest oversupply that we said all along was our objective and we’ve incorporated that in the design. So this sets us up for the future. It’s good policy for certainty, it’s good policy for our environmental credentials as well. Our requirement in many ways, despite the complexity is modest. Keep up to 20% of your gas for Australians. So Australian gas should be for Australian use. King says existing contractual obligations will remain the same. The scheme will commence on 1 January 2027. Andrew Hastie being dubbed a traitor is ‘disgraceful’, the Greens’ David Shoebridge says They may not align politically, but Greens senator David Shoebridge has also come out swinging in defence of Andrew Hastie and his fight with One Nation. Shoebridge tells News24 it’s “disgraceful” for One Nation to attack Andrew Hastie for giving evidence against Ben Roberts-Smith in his failed defamation trial. And he sounds pretty furious too. I disagree with pretty much everything that comes out of Hastie’s mouth, like his whole suite of policies are things that I tend to oppose. I’m not saying it 100%, but pretty much everything comes out of his mouth. But for the life of me, I can’t work out how any political party can stand by an attack on somebody because they go into court and they tell the truth as they understand it. And doing it in circumstances where you’re facing a whole bunch of pressure and the idea that you make that your political attack on somebody. I mean it’s actually pretty fucking disgraceful to attack him for that. ‘No graver accusation’ than One Nation labelling Hastie a traitor, Paterson says The shadow defence minister, James Paterson, has come out to bat for his colleague Andrew Hastie in his fight against One Nation. Speaking to News24 earlier, the Victorian senator said the rightwing party had crossed a line and said they “should be ashamed of themselves”. Paterson echoed the call of Hastie, that Pauline Hanson should take responsibility for the One Nation cartoon video labelling the SAS veteran a traitor, and called her weak for not owning it. I’m conscious that I’ve not served today in uniform. And like Pauline Hanson and James Ashby and most of One Nation, I would never dream of accusing someone who has served in uniform for our country of being a traitor. There’s no graver accusation to me particularly about someone like Andrew Hastie. I think they should be ashamed of themselves. And I think Pauline Hanson showed her weakness last night in her interview with Chris Kenny, where she refused to take responsibility for a cartoon, which is pinned to the top of her X page, which she authorises, which she provides the voiceover for … she refused to take responsibility, but she also refused to repeat those words about Andrew Hastie. I think that shows weakness and I think, frankly, she should toughen up and take responsibility. Jacqui Lambie, an independent senator and defence veteran, has blasted Pauline Hanson and One Nation’s cartoon video calling Andrew Hastie a traitor after he gave evidence against Ben Roberts-Smith in his failed defamation trial. Lambie doesn’t mince her words. Like Hastie, Lambie says the video is an attack on all veterans and says Hanson is showing her “true colours”. She tells RN Breakfast the cartoon should be removed immediately: What she’s doing in those cartoons is absolutely disgusting. They are full of bloody violence. I mean, how people can watch that rubbish is beyond me. But attacking Andrew Hastie, a veteran that has served in our Afghanistan war, or any other veteran, is the lowest ebb you can possibly do. That woman is nothing less than a bloody coward. I tell you what, you’re seeing her true colours start to shine now. You watch this, the Australian people. Here comes coward Hanson. What needs to happen? I think what she should do is instead of saying, oh, it’s everybody else’s, these cartoons, those cartoons that she’s running out there, they are disgusting. They are absolutely disgusting. And she should remove that one of Hastie down right now today. And any veteran out there thinking about voting for One Nation or standing for them, I tell you what, you had better think twice. Israeli government’s policies and actions ‘unconscionable’ Julian Hill says he’s been “extremely outspoken” about the increasing settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, but won’t say how far the government will go with new sanctions. The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, this week announced the government would take more action against the settlements but wouldn’t follow the UK in implementing trade bans. Hill tells RN Breakfast: This is against international law and the current Israeli government’s policies and actions are unconscionable. The government has already taken significant steps. We’ve sanctioned Israeli ministers, we’ve sanctioned individuals, we’ve sanctioned entities. We never speculate on specific measures before we take them. Sanctions are ultimately an expression, a serious powerful legal tool, an expression of our national interest looking at the international circumstance. And when the foreign minister signs off on new measures, she’ll announce them at that time. Labor introducing new laws to crack down on illegal tobacco Labor will introduce new laws to make it easier to prosecute criminals involved in the illicit tobacco trade, as the government fights an uphill battle against the exploding black market. The new laws will target organised crime, distributors and retailers selling illegal cigarettes. The assistant customs minister, Julian Hill, is announcing legislation that he says will target organised crime, distributors and retailers selling black market cigarettes. He tells RN Breakfast the customs rules were designed for small-scale “revenue fraud, you know, under-declaring, smuggling a little bit of stuff in” and need to be completely overhauled. The new laws think about it as a list of observable indicators, very simple, fact-based things like: is the tobacco appropriately packaged? Is it a menthol cigarette even hiding in plain packaging? Is it being concealed? Does it have paperwork at the border? Or my personal favourite: is the retail price of this packet of cigarettes less than the amount of excise and GST combined? If any of these facts are proven, just one of them, that establishes the reasonable suspicion of the criminal offence of importing, possession, or conveying. It’ll give powerful new tools to Border Force but every state and territory police force to go after the crooks. ‘Disappointed he thinks I’m a coward’: Joyce Barnaby Joyce says he doesn’t believe Andrew Hastie is a traitor and has respect for his military service, after Hastie accused him and Pauline Hanson of being “lying cowards”. Joyce yesterday told Guardian Australia he wasn’t aware of the One Nation cartoon video that calls Hastie a traitor. This morning Hastie said he would make the fight a politically costly one for Hanson. Joyce was stopped by reporters on his way into parliament this morning and said he had reached out to Hastie last night: I said, look, my door’s open if you want to talk about this. I don’t know why he thinks I’m a liar. I don’t quite know why he believes I lied about it. I’m disappointed he thinks I’m a coward. I don’t know how he came to that opinion but that’s up to him. I don’t think he’s a traitor. I absolutely respect the services given to our nation, like my family, has given to the service of New Zealand and Australia. Democracy’s a robust thing. Andrew Hastie has continued to step up the fight against One Nation, after one of its cartoon Please Explain videos referred to the Liberal MP and SAS veteran as a “traitor” after he gave evidence against Ben Roberts-Smith in his failed defamation claim. Hastie tells RN Breakfast the cartoon effectively attacked not just him but all veterans. Yesterday he told News24 Hanson should “own” the cartoon because Hanson said she hadn’t called Hastie a “traitor”, or take it down. Hanson then refused to take down the video and accused Hastie of making a “mountain out of molehill”. Hastie this morning says he won’t take legal action against Hanson, because she’s backed by mining billionaire Gina Rinehart, but promises to make it a costly battle politically. She’s not fit to govern this country. And she’s also cast a massive slur on veterans around the country who think that Australian soldiers should hold high standards of conduct on the battlefield. It’s actually an attack on veterans, not just an attack on me, because you’ve got to remember more than 20 plus SAS combat veterans were called to give evidence in the federal court. Are they traitors too? This question she won’t answer and I think it shows weakness from her. I’m not after legal action, particularly when she’s financed by Australia’s richest person. Why would I walk into a fight that I can’t win financially? But yes, I’m going to impose costs politically. ‘We need to explain Australia doesn’t have a migration crisis’: Malinauskas Peter Malinaukas says he understands the concerns of Australians worried about migration and the housing shortage in Australia, but that the answer is politicians need to explain there is a housing crisis not a migration crisis happening. He tells the ABC’s AM program that Australia will soon have more people over 65 than under 15 and migration will be essential to replace the ageing workforce. We need to explain that Australia doesn’t really have a migration crisis so much as a housing crisis. If we have a housing crisis, we would do well to focus our skills policy on making sure that we’re bringing in the very workers that we require in the housing construction industry. You know, Australia’s got a massive shortage of almost every trade. Everyone, I think, accepts that it needs to be a well-calibrated, balanced migration program. My point is that we haven’t seen much evidence in the political discourse in this country in the last few years making the case for migration. Just to be seeing be a lot of culture wars being executed against migration. And I think that’s self-defeating, and we’ve got a responsibility to stand up against it. But when asked what the magic number is for a well-balanced migration program, Malinauskas won’t say. Instead of coming up with an arbitrary number and then cutting different parts of the migration program, Malinaukas says governments should work from the ground up, determining the skills shortages, and growth in regional areas, and then coming up with a target. The South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, has warned the Albanese government not to join the “madness” of cutting migration to appease One Nation. In a speech in Sydney last night, Malinauskas – whose grandparents migrated to Australia after the second world war – said the wave of populist politics has “more than arrived in Australia”, but the government should push back. Above all else, [we must] preserve our strong migration program … The correct political response to anti-immigration politics and populists is not appeasement. More troubling is the prospect of mainstream politics entering a political race to the bottom for who can cut migration numbers the most. This is not unfortunate – this is madness. There could be no greater act of national economic self harm at this time than to slash migration numbers for political purposes. He also warns against cutting international student numbers, calling it “crazy”. Imagine if we did this to the mining industry, there world be an ad on every television station and mobile phone about how we’re killing the goose that lays the golden egg. It is crazy. Good morning, Krishani Dhanji here with you for the final sitting day of the fortnight. We’ll be hearing more on migration today with the South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, overnight warning the Albanese government not to join the “race to the bottom” against One Nation in cutting migration. The premier is doing the media rounds this morning. Speaking of One Nation, the stoush between Pauline Hanson and Andrew Hastie continues – we’ll be following that closely. And expect some more fight over the grants program that gave Labor seats a majority of funding, as well as the government’s digital duty of care bill, it’ll be an interesting issue for the Coalition – we understand there’s a pretty wide spread in opinion across their party room over the bill. There’s plenty to get to, so let’s get stuck in! In Victoria a car is stolen or broken into every 43 minutes: data Melbourne recorded more insurance claims for stolen and broken-into cars than all other Australian capital cities combined, according to the Insurance Council of Australia. Property crime data released by the ICA showed Victoria had the highest rates of car theft and home burglary claims in the country in the last financial year. Analysis of Insurance Statistics Australia (ISA) data showed that there were more than 12,300 claims – costing insurers $244m – lodged in the state for cars stolen or broken into. In the same time period, every other state and territory recorded a decline. The ICA’s chief executive, Andrew Hall, said in Victoria a car was stolen or broken into every 43 minutes while a home is broken into every two hours. The insurance data shows Victoria has a crime problem, and it is being felt directly by households, businesses and communities. The ICA has called for a statewide strategy and better intelligence sharing, the establishment of centrally coordinated clean-up arrangements, and the abolishment of stamp duty on business, home and contents insurance products. It also called for improving insurance affordability for healthcare professionals, community organisations and live music venues by “modernising civil liability laws”. Hopes Australia would join UK trade ban on Israeli settlements in West Bank Speaking to the ABC’s 7.30, Emily Thornberry, the chair of the UK’s foreign affairs select committee, was asked whether she hoped Australia would join the UK’s trade ban decision: I think it was hoped that they might but, you know, all countries have their own decisions to make. We all want the same thing and nobody says this is easy. On Tuesday, the UK government announced it would ban imported goods from illegal settlements in the occupied territories. Australia is preparing another round of sanctions against Israel but has stopped short of joining the UK’s trade ban. Thornberry said she had a “a lot of time” for the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong: I don’t know the basis upon which she’s made a decision not to be involved with us, but I’m sure that you know she believes that what she’s doing is in the interests of Palestinians and in the interests of justice. She later added: I’m always happy to talk to my Australian friends and maybe even persuade them. On Wednesday, Wong said she was concerned a blanket ban could have “unintended consequences” for Australian businesses, Palestinians and Israelis and reiterated the country would continue to protect the prospect of a two-state solution. Former prime minister Kevin Rudd is in Canberra for a round of high-profile speeches this week, marking his return to Australia after serving as ambassador to Washington DC. Rudd spoke at the Australian Institute of International Affairs on Wednesday night and will be at the National Press Club today. He said Australia must continue to push multilateral diplomacy, even as Donald Trump withdraws the US from a range of important global institutions. Australia, as a leading middle power, should promote the United Nations system, which has support across Asia and Europe, according to Rudd. There remains an opportunity for Australia, in partnership with other middle powers around the world, to put our shoulders to the wheel in supporting those UN multilateral institutions which now find themselves under financial and institutional pressure as a result of the US withdrawing. Australia remains active in the UN, the IMF and the World Bank. We remain active in the G20 and in APEC. We remain active in major regional institutions, such as the Pacific Islands Forum, where the government has once again registered a remarkable series of foreign policy achievements. Rudd said this kind of serious engagement would “put flesh on the bones” of the plan outlined by the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, at Davos earlier this year. And it would mark a deeply practical contribution to sustaining the multilateral rules-based system as America resolves its internal domestic debate on its future posture within it. Good morning Welcome to Guardian Australia’s live coverage for Thursday. Krishani Dhanji will join us shortly. Let’s begin.