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Farmers warn budget will not curb rising food prices
Farmers say the federal budget will not stop food prices from rising further and have slammed its new biosecurity levy.
National Farmers’ Federation president Fiona Simson described Tuesday’s budget as a missed opportunity to help keep a lid on prices.
“The budget does nothing to get to the heart of rampant food price inflation,” she said.
Farmers were hoping for money to fix roads, tax incentives and help with worker shortages, but Ms Simson said the budget falls short.
She also criticised a new biosecurity protection levy to be paid by importers and producers from July 2024 as “a tax whack for farmers” who already made a significant contribution.
Agriculture Minister Murray Watt said the levy was “modest” and the budget heralds a new era for agriculture that both protects and grows the industry.
“For the first time in our history, Australia will have sustainable biosecurity funding, something farmers have called for, for years,” he told AAP.
“Biosecurity is a shared responsibility and so too is paying for it,” Senator Watt said on Wednesday.
The government will provide an additional $1 billion over four years for biosecurity and then $267 million a year ongoing from 2027, to help stop exotic pests and diseases coming into the country.
AAP
NSW Coalition backtracks on support for Voice
By Michael McGowan
The NSW Coalition has walked away from former premier Dominic Perrottet’s vocal support for a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous Voice to parliament as it emerged a proposal on the referendum wasn’t taken to the previous cabinet.
On Wednesday, new Opposition Leader Mark Speakman said the shadow cabinet had agreed that MPs from the NSW Liberals and Nationals would be able to campaign freely for either the yes or no vote “in line with their own views and those of their community”.
NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman has revealed he was not consulted on the former Coalition government’s support for the Voice to parliament.Credit: Nikki Short
Speakman, a senior counsel, revealed while he was “sympathetic in principle” to the concept of the Voice, he had reservations about the “proposed language” of the referendum.
“I need to be satisfied that the proposed words would produce a sufficiently flexible and practical outcome and also that it will advance the needs of Indigenous Australians,” he said.
“As it’s currently drafted, I’m not sure the proposed language will do this.”
Read more here.
Bandt says Labor’s $10b housing fund like ‘bringing a bucket of water to a bushfire’
By Lachlan Abbott
Greens leader Adam Bandt says the Albanese government’s $10 billion housing fund is like “bringing a bucket of water to a bushfire” as the party pushes Labor to put more money towards addressing Australia’s housing crisis.
Bandt told Melbourne radio station 3AW he didn’t think population growth was the main reason for tight rental markets and limited housing affordability, instead calling for a rent freeze and $5 billion a year to be spent on public housing to boost supply.
Greens leader Adam Bandt says forcing a vote on the housing fund this week is a “terrible idea”.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“We want more public housing to be built in this country and what Labor’s doing is bringing a bucket of water to a bushfire and saying that that’ll do the trick,” Bandt said, calling for tax increases on profitable resources companies to pay for the Greens’ public housing proposal.
As mentioned earlier, the Greens again blocked the government’s attempts to pass its $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund in the Senate today.
Key housing bills further delayed
By Rachel Clun
The government’s attempts to get its key housing legislation through parliament have been stymied again today.
Labor wants to get its $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund up and running - it’s part of the government’s plan to fund 30,000 social and affordable homes over the next five years - while the Greens say the Housing Minister needs to keep negotiating to improve the bills.
A little earlier today the Greens, Coalition and crossbenchers (bar the Lambie Network senators) voted against a motion to extend Senate debate time tonight, to allow debate on the bills.
Housing Minister Julie Collins said the bill cannot be delayed any longer as Australia desperately needs new homes.
“Senators who say they support more social and affordable homes need to stop the delays and pass the bill this week,” she said.
“The Fund is backed by numerous stakeholders, including housing experts, community housing providers, Housing Ministers from across the country, and numerous crossbenchers across the Parliament.”
The government is planning to move an amendment to its bill, indexing the $500 cap on returns from the fund (which will be used to pay for the housing) to inflation from 2029-30.
Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather said Labor didn’t care that people were stuck in housing strife, after the budget revealed limited support for renters.
“We were elected to represent people who are hurting: we’re not going to be intimidated and we’re not going to roll over,” he said.
“Our message to Labor is we will pass this bill straight away if you work with the states to get a freeze on rent increases and guarantee 5 billion to build public and genuinely affordable housing.”
Drumgold fights back tears over media conference statements
By Angus Thompson
ACT Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold SC has fought back tears admitting he “probably” shouldn’t have made supportive statements of Brittany Higgins when he fronted a media conference, announcing there would be no retrial of Bruce Lehrmann.
Drumgold, who for the past three days has been giving evidence in the ACT government’s inquiry into the conduct of authorities in the abandoned criminal trial, said the statement he had given on December 2 had been “burned in my memory”.
ACT Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold.Credit: Rhett Wyman
Counsel assisting the inquiry Erin Longbottom KC took Drumgold to the part of his press conference in which he said: “Miss Higgins has faced a level of personal attack that I have not seen in over 20 years of doing this work.
“She has done so with bravery, grace and dignity, and it is my hope that this will now stop, and Miss Higgins will be allowed to heal.”
Asked why he remembered it so well, Drumgold said, “I realised I probably shouldn’t have done it.”
“It was on my part naive that it would have any benefit,” he said, adding “the trust in the media … was lost on me following that”.
Drumgold fought back tears as he said, “I foolishly thought they might give her a break”.
“I think the goal was the media might at least back off for a while,” he said.
Asked whether he had turned his mind to the effect his statement would have on Lehrmann, who had pleaded not guilty to raping Higgins and has maintained his innocence, he said, “possibly not as much as I should have.”
Minns refuses to answer questions on parliament floor from Gareth Ward
By Lucy Cormack
NSW Premier Chris Minns will not answer questions on the floor of parliament from Gareth Ward until a committee has made a judgement on the Kiama MP’s continued service while facing historic sexual assault charges in a NSW court.
In his first question time as premier, on Wednesday Minns did not address a question from Ward about disability policy, and instead took it on notice. He later clarified that he would only “reply formally” to Ward’s questions until the parliamentary ethics and privileges committee made a finding.
“There are serious charges that he is facing as a member of the public, and they have to be weighed against his involvement in the Legislative Assembly,” Minns said after question time.
“I’m going to take any questions that he asks of the government on notice until we get a determination from the privileges committee.”
Newly deposed NSW Nationals leader Paul Toole with Kiama MP Gareth Ward at the opening of the new NSW parliament.Credit: Kate Geraghty
The Liberal-turned-independent Ward was suspended from parliament last year after he was charged with historical sexual assault, which he denies. He was also suspended from the Liberal Party, moving to the crossbench before he was forced out of the parliament.
The new Labor government’s referral to the parliament’s powerful privileges committee marks a major backdown from Minns’s pre-election promise to suspend him from the chamber. Former premier Dominic Perrottet also vowed to do the same, if he had claimed victory.
Read more here.
Salim Mehajer guilty of domestic violence against ex-girlfriend
By Sarah McPhee and Jenny Noyes
Former Auburn deputy mayor Salim Mehajer has been found guilty of domestic violence against an ex-girlfriend, including threats to kill her and her family, as well as putting his hands over her mouth and nose until she blacked out.
Mehajer, 36, pleaded not guilty to intimidation, intentionally suffocating a person with recklessness, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and four counts of common assault, including one alternative charge.
Salim Mehajer in 2020. He has been on trial in Sydney over domestic violence charges.Credit: AAP/Joel Carrett
He represented himself in a three-week trial in Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court.
After deliberating since about 3.30pm on Tuesday, the jury on Wednesday afternoon found him guilty of all six charges.
Read more here.
ABC staff brace for redundancies
By Nick Bonyhady
ABC staff are bracing for redundancies in senior ranks from a major restructure that is widely expected to be announced as soon as this week, despite the federal government providing five years of funding certainty to the broadcaster in Tuesday’s budget.
The reorganisation will shift the broadcaster from having three divisions to just two: news and content, putting executives first in the firing line for job losses that will help the ABC cover an 11 per cent pay rise it agreed to give staff over the next three years.
The ABC has emphasised the restructure is designed to improve how it commissions content, simplify its structure and help it chase digital audiences, rather than being a money-saving measure.
The ABC’s restructure moves it further away from its old model, where different mediums like TV and radio operated in silos.Credit: Steven Siewert
But it has refused to rule out job losses in correspondence with the Community and Public Sector Union obtained by this masthead.
“The [union] often asks the ABC to give a commitment that no employer can give, and that is to guarantee that there will be no redundancies resulting from a change,” ABC employee relations head Vanessa MacBean wrote on Tuesday in response to a question about regional staff.
“What we can do is reiterate the managing director [David Anderson’s] message that this change is not about a reduction in roles.”
Treasurer Jim Chalmers promised $6 billion to the ABC over the next five years in an announcement that fulfilled an election commitment and received a warm welcome from the broadcaster.
Albanese takes aim at Coalition’s 2019 ‘back in black’ prediction
By Paul Sakkal
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has joined his treasurer in ridiculing the Coalition’s response to Labor’s budget, claiming the recently announced surplus was underpinned by the biggest fiscal turnaround ever.
Labor leaders have used the theatre of parliamentary question time to needle the former government’s fiscal strategy and hammer home the argument that Labor is the better economic manager, a field of federal policy generally considered a strength of the Coalition.
“The leader of the opposition correctly identified the spiralling debt and deficit that was there [when] they left. That is what he said in June 2022 because they expected a deficit this year of some $78 billion,” he said.
“Instead, what you have is a massive turnaround and a forecast surplus of $2 billion. And yet, they stand up here and ask a question about and interject with those absurd comments after the biggest physical turnaround in history. Ever.”
Albanese ridiculed the Morrison government’s production of mugs that had the words “back in black” printed on them, regarding the Coalition’s projected 2019 surplus that did not eventuate.
“The only surplus they had was in Josh Frydenberg’s office, the mugs that they had to stop selling,” Albanese said.
Leaders pay tribute to Yunupingu
By Paul Sakkal
Our political leaders in Parliament House have also paid tribute to Yunupingu, one of the most significant Indigenous figures in the nation’s history, who died last month after a long illness.
The 74-year-old, whose name means “sacred rock that stands against time”, was the 1978 Australian of the Year and spent his life advancing Aboriginal rights, particularly land rights, before more recently focusing on the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
After Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced at the Garma festival last year that a referendum on the Voice to parliament would go ahead, Albanese said that Yunupingu took him aside.
Yunupingu, pictured in 2019, died at the age of 74.Credit: Peter Eve/Yothu Yindi Foundation
“He asked me, ‘Are you serious this time?’ I replied: ‘Yes, we’re going to do it.’”
“When I spoke with him just before the end, on the very day we announced the words in the legislation that had been brought before this parliament, I told him I was hopeful we would get there.”
“He responded ‘you spoke truth’. Three powerful words that will forever be with me.”
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said Yunupingu was a “strong, deep and practical man, one of the greatest Indigenous leaders modern Australia has produced.”
“Yunupingu wanted independence for his people, seeing his people as the source for salvation. Solutions and self-determination.”
Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney, who is leading the government’s agenda on the Voice, said the “man of fire” had witnessed many broken promises by government’s who failed to heal the wounds of Indigenous Australians.
A successful referendum would honour his legacy, she said.
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2023-05-10 08:11:01Z
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