We will leave the live blog here for Monday night.
In case you missed it, here’s what made the news today:
Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming is vowing to fight the opposition leader, John Pesutto, over his push to expel her from the Liberal party room. Deeming claims a neo-Nazi group “gate-crashed” an anti-trans event she attended.
My colleague Daniel Hurst has this analysis of the political reflections today marking the 20th anniversary of the Iraq war. Or rather, the lack thereof for the most part.
The federal government should be using some of the $10bn allocated in the budget to cybersecurity defences to combat people using AI to bypass biometric securities including voice authentication, Greens senator David Shoebridge has said.
Charities urge government to increase foreign aid for hunger by $110m
A $110m increase in foreign aid to global hunger hotspots from the Australian government could help avoid a catastrophe, aid organisations said.
AAP reports a group including Oxfam, Unicef and Caritas Australia have asked the Australian government to invest in a $110m famine relief package for countries in Africa and the Middle East.
“When children starve to death it is an unspeakable tragedy,” Lulu Mitshabu, Caritas Australia program coordinator for Africa, said.
“We urge the government to give what it can to save lives.”
The move would be supported by a growing majority of Australians, according to a poll conducted by YouGov.
The poll of 1,055 voters found 60% supported overseas aid, compared to 52% in 2019.
The group, called the Help Fight Famine Coalition, called out Australia’s relatively low contribution to foreign aid.
They said that Australia contributes only 0.2% of its gross national income to foreign aid, as opposed to the OECD average of 0.32%.
They also asked for a further $200m investment into developing strategies for food security to prevent hunger crises from emerging.
“The world is getting hotter, conflicts are erupting, new and unknown diseases are emerging. But food is essential,” Lyn Morgain, chief executive at Oxfam Australia, said
“Across the world more people than ever go to bed hungry and wake up unsure how they’ll sustain themselves or their family,” she said.
“Through science, co-operation and investment no one needs to go hungry.”
Delays in FOI requests a ‘failure’ of democracy, former senator says
Lengthy delays in Australia’s freedom of information processes are shielding the government from scrutiny, the former senator Rex Patrick says.
Former senator Rex Patrick in Melbourne on Monday. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP
AAP reports Patrick, a self-proclaimed “transparency warrior”, wants the federal court to review how long it takes the Australian Information Commissioner to make decisions and outline what is an “unreasonable delay”.
There is currently no legal obligation for the commissioner to reach a decision within a specific period of time.
The former independent senator’s barrister Tiphanie Acreman said Patrick had more than 20 FOI applications under review, with some “in the queue for as long as three years”.
“A system that tolerates these lengthy delays undermines the object of the FOI Act,” Acreman told the hearing in Melbourne on Monday.
Speaking outside court before the hearing, Patrick described the FOI system as broken.
“There’s something like 1,500 FOI requests that have not been reviewed over the last four or five years – this is a failure in terms of democracy. We have to do something to fix it,” Patrick told reporters.
“Delay is the enemy of FOI, and the Information Commissioner is aiding and abetting that enemy.”
Acreman highlighted communications between her client and the office of the information commissioner where they sought an extension of time to provide an update numerous times.
In one email, the commissioner’s office cited changes in staff, unexpected periods of leave and competing priorities as a cause for the delays.
Issues within the office of the Information Commissioner were highlighted earlier in March, when the commissioner, Leo Hardiman KC, quit less than a year into a five-year appointment.
He said his powers weren’t enough to overhaul a chronically delayed system. Hardiman said he would continue to focus on the implementation and bedding down of these changes until his resignation takes effect on 19 May.
The Centre for Public Integrity in September said FOI requests responded to outside the statutory 30-day period had increased from 11.5% in 2011-12 to 22.5% in 2021-22.
Requests over 90 days late have increased more than 10-fold, now making up one in every eight requests.
The matter before Justice Michael Wheelahan is expected to continue on Tuesday.
The South Sydney rugby league great John Sattler has died at the age of 80.
Sattler, who played 197 times for the club and captained the team to four premiership victories from 1967 to 1971, had suffered from dementia in recent years.
Vale the great @SSFCRABBITOHS man John Sattler, he sent me this signed picture after south’s were reinstated into the NRL comp, I’m a huge fan always will be and the few times I met him he was super gracious, RIP mate xx pic.twitter.com/kZEg5fBYkl
Latitude Financial fears cyber-attack could worsen
Latitude Financial fears the cyber attack on its system could be worse than first thought and is not taking on new customers, AAP reports.
Some 330,000 customer records and identity documents were stolen last week.
In an announcement to the ASX on Monday, the financial services company warned it was bracing for the full scale of the attack to widen.
“We are likely to uncover more stolen information affecting both current and past Latitude customers and applicants,” it said.
It is not taking on new customers including through retailers it has agreements with such as David Jones, JB Hi-Fi, The Good Guys and Harvey Norman.
All its platforms remain offline but the company is working to restore them in coming days.
Latitude said about 96% of the personal information stolen was driver licences or driver licence numbers, with the rest being passport and Medicare details.
It promised to work with authorities to replace identification documents if necessary, at no cost to customers.
It’s believed the hack originated from a major vendor and criminals accessed an employee’s login credentials, before stealing customer information from two service providers.
The company urged customers to remain vigilant about their online safety and said it would never contact anyone requesting their password.
It said its insurance covers cyber security risks but is still working out the total cost of the attack, which is now under investigation by the Australian federal police.
The Greens teamed up with Labor and shot down the inquiry in the Senate.
The communications minister, Michelle Rowland, told ABC moments before that the last round of funding was the government honouring election commitments. The latest round of funding has just opened for applications, and Rowland said that those applications will be assessed by the department against department guidelines.
She said:
It will all be subject to the guidelines which are publicly available. The department will do those assessments and they will take into account various issues including the number of people, the number of organisations, the number of councils, the number of carriers who favour a particular location, who are able to come together and partner for these improvements.
Let’s be very clear this is what this is all about in the end. It’s about getting those improvements made and the more cooperation and feedback we get at this pre-application stage the better.
Star pleads guilty to new charges of breaching Queensland casino law
Embattled casino operator Star Entertainment has pleaded guilty to new charges of breaching Queensland’s Casino Control Act, AAP reports.
Brisbane’s Treasury Casino and the Star Gold Coast operator pleaded guilty to seven charges relating to purchasing gambling chips with a credit card.
The two separate breaches occurred between June 2017 and December 2018 and between March and April 2022.
The attorney general, Shannon Fentiman, said Star would be sentenced on 2 June.
The charges follow the suspension of Star’s Sydney licence by the NSW gaming regulator in October.
The company was slapped with a record $100m fine after an inquiry found the casino had allowed money laundering to take place inside private rooms and identified numerous compliance failures.
A similar review in Queensland also fined Star $100m after finding it unfit to hold its two casino licences, with the company neglecting anti-money laundering and responsible gaming duties in the state.
Star Entertainment has been contacted for comment.
Jonathon Duniam, the shadow environment minister, has weighed in on Labor’s failure to produce its safeguards modelling.
He said:
It’s clear that Chris Bowen is desperately trying to block Australians from seeing the modelling on their safeguard mechanism legislation. Labor’s ongoing refusal to release the modelling strongly suggests that they know that this Bill will cause substantial further pain for businesses and households across the country ... When the Coalition was in government, we publicly released our equivalent modelling. Labor should do the same, so that all interested Australians can see this information ... for themselves.
Chris Bowen pushed to release safeguard modelling details
Guardian Australia understands that both the Coalition and the Greens have lodged separate motions noting that the climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, has failed to comply with a Senate order for production of documents for the government’s safeguards modelling.
Last parliamentary sitting week, the Coalition and Greens combined to reject the government’s public interest immunity claim over the modelling.
Whether this procedural bunfight has any implication for the substance of negotiation is unclear.
The Greens motion only states that “further consideration of the Safeguard Mechanism (Crediting) Amendment Bill 2022 be deferred until the Senate resolves that the bill be brought on for consideration” – so the Senate could always agree to debate the bill despite the failure to produce modelling.
The Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said:
This policy should be about making pollution from coal and gas go down, not letting it increase. If the government is confident their plan will cut pollution from coal and gas they should release the evidence.
Anika Wells on Saudi Arabian sponsorship of Women’s World Cup
Switching to her sports minister portfolio, Anika Wells says she raised concerns about the potential for Visit Saudi Arabia to sponsor Australia and New Zealand’s Women’s World Cup later this year, working with her New Zealand counterpart.
She said there was never a formal agreement with Fifa for sponsorship, and now there won’t be.
My concern if that happened, that would be a real missed opportunity for our tourism and trade organisations here and New Zealand’s, not to have those opportunities to promote Australia and New Zealand as co-hosts.
She said aside from the human rights concerns players had been raising, she was more concerned about Australia missing the opportunity to promote its own tourism if another country’s tourism body was given sponsorship of the cup.
It was more a case of Sam Kerr scores a goal on home soil, we want the billboard to have a kangaroo swimming through the Great Barrier Reef saying, ‘Come get more of this’, not a sign saying to visit a different country. I’m glad that Fifa landed in a way to allow Australia to do that.
Government to fall short of aged care nursing target
The minister for aged care, Anika Wells, tells ABC’s afternoon briefing that the government will likely not reach the target of access to 24/7 nursing in every aged care facility by 1 July as the government had targeted.
She says over 80% of facilities are now meeting the requirement but some in regional and remote locations will not get there.
She said:
About another 9% are nearly there or steadily working towards making it. We acknowledge there’s probably about 5% of facilities, particularly in our rural and remote areas, who will not be able to get there.
We’re working closely with them to make sure they get the exemptions and support, as do their residents, that they need.
She says facilities that do not meet the target will not get the extra payment, which will act as a “carrot” for the centres, but Wells acknowledges that the industry is still short thousands of workers.
Wells said:
The workforce shortages we will not be able to stop overnight, in the same way any issue that has come up across decades. I’m working closely with a number of ministers across every portfolio. We’re looking at how to address the care economy and mow to fix the workforce shortages in the care economy.
I point you to the pilot that’s running successfully, I work closely with the immigration and home affairs ministers about what we can do in their patches. Obviously 180,000 fee-free Tafe place also help us to train up people. We’re pulling every lever.
Josh Taylor is going to take you through the afternoon – I will be back early tomorrow morning to take you through the second of these eight sittings days. Tuesday is party room meeting day, which means we should get some decisions on legislation, as well as a lot more rah-rah over the Aukus deal.
And we will learn some more about the safeguard mechanism. Thank you to everyone who followed along with me today – stay tuned with Josh, and take care of you.
The embargo on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “synthesis” report lifts will be lifting soon, which puts the safeguard mechanism debate into context.
That’s all going to be discussed tomorrow, along with the criticisms the government’s bill won’t do enough to address the issue, while the government maintains it is a start.
It’s a stalemate with some high stakes – we will bring you everything you need to know, tomorrow.
NSW doctors push for bipartisan support on early childhood education
Meanwhile, in other policy news, AAP reports on a push to have early childhood education embraced by both sides of politics in NSW:
The Royal Australasian College of Physicians is calling on both sides of NSW politics to commit to early childhood education for three-year-olds.
The College’s president, DrJacqueline Small, said the issue of early education should be a major topic for both sides of politics in the lead up to the state election this weekend.
“We know access to quality early learning has lasting impacts on children, and universal access is an important step to foster a more equitable society,” Small said.
Research has shown nearly a quarter of children in Australia are arriving at kindergarten without the necessary foundational skills.
Small said the issue was pressing in the wake of the pandemic, with many children missing out on vital socialisation and learning skills.
“The early years are really critical periods ... soon after birth and in the first few years. So it’s important kids are exposed to learning and new environments,” she said.
In an election statement, the RACP is calling on the incoming government to prioritise early childhood education through a program dubbed the Kids COVID Catch Up Campaign.
Small said it will focus on some of the bad habits picked up during lockdowns, including growing social media use and an increase in childhood obesity rates.
She said countries in Europe and parts of the US were offering two free years of pre-kindergarten, with promising results.
My community wants to ensure expenditure of this fund is directed to critical future industries and is not used to support fossil fuel projects.
I have asked for the Bill to be amended to specify the Safeguard Transformation Stream, within the Powering the Regions Fund, is not available to new fossil fuel projects, or the expansion of existing licenses.
Australian Carbon Credit Units
The people of North Sydney are deeply concerned about the apparent loophole in this Bill which will allow polluters to avoid genuine emissions reduction by either pursuing genuine emissions abatement on site or by purchasing unlimited carbon credits (ACCUs) to offset their emissions.
For this legislation to deliver true reduction in gross emissions, it is imperative there is a clear hierarchy for emissions reduction efforts with true, on-site reduction and then true on-site abatement prioritised over all other options.
When carbon credit units are needed, they must be top-notch. I have asked the Government to commit, in full, to the immediate implementation of the Chubb Review recommendations.
Reduce threshold to increase effectiveness
The Government must clearly articulate its plan for Australia to achieve net-zero by 2050.
The North Sydney community wants the Government to use the Safeguard Mechanism to legislate a progressive reduction in the emissions threshold - by three quarters – from the current 100,000 tCO2e to 25,000tCO2e emissions.
This ratcheting down over time would provide industry with a clear trajectory to net zero in 2050.
The Bill should also incentivise an ‘opt in’ scheme through which a broader section of industry can reduce their direct emissions and generate credits which would then be available to trade within the Safeguard Mechanism Scheme.
This would have the dual benefit of increasing participation in the scheme and increasing credit supply for hard-to-abate sectors.
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