Key posts
Today’s headlines at a glance
By Nigel Gladstone
Good evening, and thanks for reading our live coverage.
Here’s a summary of today’s main political developments:
- At the Quad leaders’ talks in Tokyo, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vowed to bring more “energy and resources” to the region and confirmed Australia will host the Quad summit next year. During early remarks, US President Joe Biden joked that he wouldn’t blame Albanese if he fell asleep during the meeting given he had flown straight to Japan after being sworn in as PM.
- Outgoing defence minister Peter Dutton is all but certain to become opposition leader after a potential challenger bowed out of the race.
- Speaking of potential leadership challenges, Nationals MP Darren Chester said he is considering running for his party’s leadership and former Nationals leader Michael McCormack has also not ruled out another tilt at the party’s top job.
- The Liberal Party has recorded its lowest proportion of seats since its first poll in 1946.
- Meanwhile, independent MP Helen Haines, who was returned to her seat of Indi on Saturday with a swing of more than 7 per cent, has urged the Albanese government to adopt her proposed model for a national integrity commission if it is serious about restoring people’s trust in politics by Christmas. This push has been backed by David Pocock, who was expected to be elected as an independent senator for the ACT and could hold the balance of power in the upper house with the Greens.
- And four seats are still too close to call. Among those are Gilmore in southern NSW, where Liberal candidate and former state government minister Andrew Constance says his party has been punished for focusing on itself rather than voters; Brisbane, where Labor and the Greens are battling over preferences; and Deakin in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.
Australian Border Force has returned a boat of asylum seekers to Sri Lanka – the first boat turn-back under the new Labor government. Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles ordered Border Force to continue with the boat turn-back after the vessel was intercepted off the coast of Christmas Island on Saturday morning.
We will be back bright and early tomorrow morning. Until then, have a lovely night.
Latest posts
China rhetoric played a role in Liberal defeat: candidate
By Marta Pascual Juanola
Liberal candidate for Menzies, Keith Wolahan, says the Morrison government’s rhetoric on China contributed to the party’s defeat at the election by fuelling discontent among Chinese-Australian voters.
Wolahan, who is holding on to the seat of Menzies by a wafer-thin margin after a 6 per cent swing against him, told ABC Radio Melbourne’s Raf Epstein this afternoon that he had flagged his concerns with members of the cabinet throughout the campaign.
Liberal candidate for Menzies Keith Wolahan.Credit:Tash Sorensen
“The response often was, ‘But that’s not what we mean, we are separating the Chinese regime from the people’, but I don’t think that message and that intent got through, and it’s probably something we needed to say more and to say more clearly,” he said.
Wolahan said his team spoke to 4000 voters of Chinese background in his electorate and the feedback was clear.
“They said: ‘We are normally your people, we’re small business people who care about our children having a better future and looking after our parents’,” he said.
“But they did tell us that they felt the language at times from the government was insensitive.”
With the seat predicted to remain in Liberal hands (it was formerly held by Kevin Andrews but he was defeated in a preselection battle), Wolahan said he would focus on rebuilding trust in the party among the Chinese community in Menzies.
Albanese will tread carefully in responding to China’s olive branch
By Anthony Galloway
China’s Premier Li Keqiang has congratulated Anthony Albanese on his election victory, ending a two-year diplomatic freeze between Canberra and Beijing.
This is a welcome development, Anthony Galloway writes. To not have had any high-level contact with Australia’s biggest trading partner for more than two years has not been ideal.
But history will judge it as the right approach. Do not forget how Australia got here.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong put in the hard work on China over the past 12 months.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
For years, Australia mistakenly viewed China solely through the prism of an economic relationship. Canberra did this while Beijing militarised the South China Sea, picked off Pacific island countries closer to the immediate region, and committed widespread espionage and foreign interference within its shores.
Australia then started to stand up for itself in 2017, and China didn’t like it.
Read more here.
New independent North Sydney MP signals ‘fundamental shift’
By Nigel Gladstone
Newly elected independent North Sydney MP Kylea Tink says the election of so many independents may cause a fundamental shift in the way politics, especially climate-related policy, is done in Australia.
“The most important thing I’ve heard consistently is people want to see climate science depoliticised and that there is a format and a framework that will stay in place regardless of who is in power,” Tink told ABC TV this afternoon.
Kylea Tink (centre) talking to a voter in Northbridge Public School.Credit:Kate Geraghty
Tink said she campaigned in pink, “not because I chose it but that was one of the colours the community group who found me was using”.
“I understand it makes it easier to categorise people by the colour-code system but from my perspective, we would be better described as ‘community independents’ because that is the thing we all have in common, we all come from within the community, approached by community groups and are seeking to represent our communities in the House of Representatives.
“Politics needs to move to a point where our parliament is about the people, not the parties. And it is called the House of Representatives, not the house of parties.”
Joyce, Canavan must share blame for Liberal wipeout: McCormack
By Mike Foley
Former Nationals leader Michael McCormack has lashed his successor, Barnaby Joyce, and firebrand senator Matt Canavan over the roles they played in the Coalition’s election defeat and confirmed he is considering a bid to regain the party’s leadership.
McCormack said Joyce was used as a weapon against the Nationals’ partner in blue-ribbon Liberal seats and that Canavan was “nuts” to declare mid-campaign that the Coalition’s policy to reach net zero emissions by 2050 was “dead”.
Barnaby Joyce (left) toppled Michael McCormack as Nationals leader in 2021 with a pitch of expanding the Nationals’ seat count.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
The Liberal Party was decimated in its heartland seats by Labor, Greens and independent teal candidates with more ambitious climate goals and could lose up to 20 seats.
The Nationals retained all of its seats but suffered swings against them in many.
“We can’t just point the finger at the Libs for those losses. We gave people an excuse to park their votes with the teals and they did so in such numbers the Libs lost,” McCormack said in an interview.
Read more here.
Chalmers back to treasurer’s office to face familiar issue: inflation
By Shane Wright
Jim Chalmers already knows his way around the treasurer’s office in Parliament House.
For more than five years, he worked in the office of then-treasurer Wayne Swan, who had to deal with the fallout from the 2008 global financial crisis.
Jim Chalmers watches on as Wayne Swan delivers the 2012 budget. The first issue for the Rudd government was inflation and cost of living.Credit:Penny Bradfield
While the budget deficits and huge increase in government spending to stave off a recession are what dominate the memories of that period today, what’s often forgotten is the early part of Swan’s turn as treasurer.
When Labor’s Kevin Rudd swept to office in November 2007, inflation was accelerating and on its way to 5 per cent.
His predecessor’s final mid-year budget update had revealed an extra $59 billion in revenue courtesy of the pre-GFC mining boom and a strong economy. But rather than save it, John Howard promised more than $46 billion in tax cuts, handouts and spending in the election lead-up.
Read more here.
Liberal Party has lowest proportion of seats since its first poll in 1946
By Katina Curtis
A loss of at least 17 seats for the Liberal Party after Saturday’s election puts the size of its defeat on par with Labor’s ousting in 2013, but it’s still smaller than in previous changes of government in 2007 and 1996.
Labor has won at least 74 seats in the new parliament and the Coalition at least 56, with seven seats still too close to call.
The narrowest contest is in Deakin, where former assistant treasurer Michael Sukkar was leading Labor’s Matt Gregg by just 74 votes at 3pm.
There’s no legislated trigger for a recount of votes in tight contests, but the Australian Electoral Commission says generally if the margin is fewer than 100 votes it will do one as a matter of course whether there’s a legal appeal or not.
In Gilmore on the NSW South Coast, Liberal candidate Andrew Constance, a former NSW minister, was trailing Labor incumbent Fiona Phillips by 78 votes at 3.45pm on Tuesday. He was ahead earlier in the day but the electoral commission corrected the way some preferences had been distributed, erasing his margin.
Read more here.
Liberals are too focused on themselves: Liberal’s Gilmore candidate
By Tom Rabe
As the battle for the southern NSW seat of Gilmore remains on a knife edge, Liberal candidate and former state government minister Andrew Constance says his party has been punished for focusing on itself rather than voters.
A few hundred votes separate Constance and Labor’s incumbent Fiona Phillips, with neither side expecting a result for at least another week as counting continues.
The regional seat, which extends from Kiama in the north past Moruya in the south, could be the only Labor-held seat to flip to the Liberals following Saturday’s election, with Constance achieving a 2.8 per cent swing in the two-party-preferred vote.
“The party has been too introverted and too focused on itself,” he said. “It has to recognise its broad-based appeal is not sectional interest. The party exists for the community … there’s no such thing as a ‘heartland’ in Australian politics.”
Former prime minister Scott Morrison campaigning with Andrew Constance. Credit:James Brickwood
Read more here.
Albanese faces reporters in Tokyo
By Nigel Gladstone
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has fronted reporters at the Quad leaders’ summit in Tokyo, saying he and the other leaders have discussed climate change and the security pact between China and the Solomon Islands.
The change in Australia’s government has brought forward the country’s net zero emissions target, which has been welcomed by summit leaders, as well as the wider global climate community. However, the new PM said he will not close coal mines or change Labor’s climate policies taken to Saturday’s elections.
“We have our policy, where we will do exactly what I’ve said we would do in terms of our powering Australia plan ... It will make a big difference,” he said.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese enjoyed a warm welcome in Tokyo at a regional leaders’ summit on Tuesday.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
Albanese said Russia “must pay a price for its actions” in Ukraine and should be condemned unequivocally. He added Australia is prepared to provide more assistance to Ukraine.
Watch: Albanese speaks at the Quad meeting
Most Viewed in Politics
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiygFodHRwczovL3d3dy5zbWguY29tLmF1L3BvbGl0aWNzL2ZlZGVyYWwvZWxlY3Rpb24tMjAyMi1yZXN1bHRzLWxpdmUtdXBkYXRlcy1hbnRob255LWFsYmFuZXNlLXBlbm55LXdvbmctaW4tamFwYW4tZm9yLXF1YWQtbWVldGluZy1wZXRlci1kdXR0b24tZXhwZWN0ZWQtdG8tYmVjb21lLWxpYmVyYWwtcGFydHktbGVhZGVyLTIwMjIwNTIzLXA1YW50dy5odG1s0gEA?oc=5
2022-05-24 09:24:43Z
1414073625
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "As it happened: Anthony Albanese, Penny Wong in Japan for Quad meeting; Peter Dutton expected to become Liberal Party leader - Sydney Morning Herald"
Post a Comment