dailynewsnblog
‘I want us to have more cut-through’: McIntosh doubles down on rebrand call
Melissa McIntosh is back on the airwaves this morning after causing a stir yesterday when calling for her party to “rebrand”.
She says it wasn’t her intention to cause such a stir and concedes she was being pretty “blunt”. But doubles down when speaking to the Today show and says that if the message isn’t being sold to the community, then perhaps the brand should change.
Just to recap, McIntosh yesterday told Sky News:
Some people think that we’re stuck in the past and our policies need to resonate with the Australia of today and the future. So I think it’d be a really good time for us to revisit our values.
Today she says the party does have strong values in “sticking up for small businesses and the individual”, but those values aren’t getting cut through.
If things aren’t resonating, and if people are actually latching on to our policies and believing in that, but they’re not wanting to vote for us, then maybe we need to do something about the brand,
I want us to have more cut-through on our policies. I worked for John Howard back in the day, and my patch, we were the Howard battlers, we’re the Menzies Forgotten people, and we’re Tony Tradie. So we are pretty much the heartland of Australia. And when the heartland of Australia tells you that you need to get more cut-through to get more voters on your side, then you need to listen to the people.
Yesterday, the Labor party weaponised her call in question time – we’ll see if they do it again.
Key events
‘We’ve all been horrified by what has been reported’, Wong extends deepest sympathies to family of teenager killed in Thailand
Jumping back into her interview on ABC News Breakfast, Wong is asked what consular assistance has been provided to the Australian man suspected of killing a 17-year old girl in Thailand.
The foreign minister, says first that she extends her deepest sympathies to the girls’ friends and family, and that she’s been horrified by what’s been reported.
She won’t provide any details of what consular assistance has been offered. She also says she’s not yet spoken to her counterpart in Thailand, but there has been some engagement on the issue at the “official level”.
I want to start by saying this is horrific and I think we’ve all been horrified by what has been reported and extend our deepest sympathies to the family and friends who have lost someone they love dearly.
We provide consular assistance to people. I’m not able to provide details about because I’m bound by privacy requirements but all Australians have access to consular support around the world when necessary.
I know there has been engagement at the official level and I will be obviously going to be ASEAN meeting, so I no doubt will have the opportunity to speak with my foreign minister counterpart there.
Vanuatu promises to ‘consult’ with Australia on third-party investment in critical infrastructure
The minister for defence industry and the Pacific, Pat Conroy, is celebrating the treaty signed by Vanuatu and Australia yesterday, and is asked to explain what consultation will look like on third-party investment in critical infrastructure under that agreement.
The minister tells ABC RN Breakfast that the consultation process will allow Australia to help assess countries understand “what they’re getting, understand both the opportunities and also the risks that that poses”.
Asked whether he believes that consultation process will be honoured under future governments, Conroy says “any issues around implementation of the treaty will be gone through the Nakamal Committee to resolve”.
Our requirement to consult is merely talking to us about what they’re planning and also us providing planning and technical assistance around that infrastructure.
These clauses are obviously constructed so that if there’s infrastructure that could be potentially militarised, there’s an opportunity through the Nakamal Committee, which is implementation committee of the treaty, because that’s really important in our region. We’re in the middle of a great power contest in our region. It’s really important that we don’t have foreign military bases in the Pacific.
Australia providing consular assistance to seven people after Venezuela earthquakes
The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, says the government is providing consular assistance to seven individuals affected by the earthquakes in Venezuela.
Speaking to ABC News Breakfast this morning, she won’t reveal more details, but says the quakes were “utterly devastating”.
It has been utterly devastating and more parties are working through the scale of those who were lost and those who are still trapped. This is very distressing situation for all and we extend our deepest sympathies to the people of Venezuelan.
We are providing some consular assistance to some seven individuals. We obviously will continue to engage with authorities to determine if any Australians need further assistance.
Asked to confirm whether the seven are Australian citizens, Wong won’t say and repeats that the government is providing assistance to “seven individuals”.
Chalmers defends house price forecasts
The government has been facing some heat over the cooling house market around Australia with falling auction clearance rates, and forecasts that house prices in Sydney and Melbourne could fall more than $100,000.
But Labor is sticking to its line that the Treasury department forecast house prices would grow 2% slower in the medium term, and not leave a bunch of homeowners going backwards.
Jim Chalmers tries to keep the narrative positive and says clearance rates went up a little this weekend in Brisbane and Adelaide, while the markets in Sydney and Melbourne began cooling before the release of the budget.
He tells Sky News:
Auction clearance rates in Brisbane came up on the weekend, if you compare the preliminary numbers from the week before. They also came up in Adelaide. They came up nationally in aggregate, as I understand it. But in Sydney and Melbourne, we saw some softness there, that actually predated the budget announcements.
Chalmers also defends against the criticisms the government should have just applied its tax changes to residential property and nothing else – like shares and businesses.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to replace one big distortion that Howard and Costello introduced when they made that big policy mistake in 1999 and ruined the housing market for too many people, especially young people; [it] doesn’t make sense to replace that big distortion with another big distortion.
And so we’re applying this CGT discount – there’s still a discount, just calculated differently to reflect real gains – we’re applying it fairly and neutrally across the board so that we don’t introduce another big distortion and repeat the mistakes.
‘I want us to have more cut-through’: McIntosh doubles down on rebrand call
Melissa McIntosh is back on the airwaves this morning after causing a stir yesterday when calling for her party to “rebrand”.
She says it wasn’t her intention to cause such a stir and concedes she was being pretty “blunt”. But doubles down when speaking to the Today show and says that if the message isn’t being sold to the community, then perhaps the brand should change.
Just to recap, McIntosh yesterday told Sky News:
Some people think that we’re stuck in the past and our policies need to resonate with the Australia of today and the future. So I think it’d be a really good time for us to revisit our values.
Today she says the party does have strong values in “sticking up for small businesses and the individual”, but those values aren’t getting cut through.
If things aren’t resonating, and if people are actually latching on to our policies and believing in that, but they’re not wanting to vote for us, then maybe we need to do something about the brand,
I want us to have more cut-through on our policies. I worked for John Howard back in the day, and my patch, we were the Howard battlers, we’re the Menzies Forgotten people, and we’re Tony Tradie. So we are pretty much the heartland of Australia. And when the heartland of Australia tells you that you need to get more cut-through to get more voters on your side, then you need to listen to the people.
Yesterday, the Labor party weaponised her call in question time – we’ll see if they do it again.
Chalmers ‘engaging’ on giving workers under-18 superannuation
Jim Chalmers won’t yet heed the call from advocates including the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Greens to guarantee superannuation payments for workers under the age of 18, but says he’s “engaging” on the issue.
Currently under the law, under-18s are only eligible for super payments if they work more than 30 hours a week.
Chalmers tells ABC News Breakfast the government is talking to young people about the issue, but the priority for the government right now, is payday super – which are new rules that take effect tomorrow, forcing employers to pay super at the same time as wages.
This is a really important issue. I actually met with a delegation of young workers about this last week. We are always looking for ways to strengthen the superannuation system to make it deliver for more workers.
Chalmers is asked twice whether all workers under 18 should get super. He says the government is open to more change but won’t make any promises or give us a timeline.
We’ve indicated a willingness to continue to engage with young people, with unions, with the super sectors, for what the next set of changes may be. For us the focus is payday super because it comes in from tomorrow.
Fuel prices increase (slightly) tomorrow
In response to the fuel crisis and war in the Middle East, the government cut the fuel excise in half – which was saving motorists about 26c per litre – which was due to end tomorrow.
But earlier this month, the government extended it for another month, but cutting 16c off the full price of petrol per litre, rather than the 26c – so prices will tick up a little.
In response, the government has told the consumer price watchdog to make sure that petrol retailers aren’t taking the mickey.
Speaking to ABC News Breakfast, the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, the extension will provide more cost-of-living relief.
This is a really important warning from the ACCC because we want to make sure that every cent of the government’s fuel excise cut is passed on to motorists who need this extra bit of relief.
It’s been really terrific to see petrol prices and diesel prices come down very substantially in recent months. In fact, this week, we think for the first time, both petrol and diesel is cheaper than it was before the war in the Middle East began. But people are still under pressure. That’s why we’re extending this fuel price relief, this petrol and diesel tax cut for another month, at a tapered rate.
Krishani Dhanji
Good morning, Krishani Dhanji here with you, thanks to Martin Farrer for getting us started!
It’s going to be another busy day in Parliament with just a few sitting days left before the winter break.
Jim Chalmers has drawn the short (or long depending on where you stand) straw and is doing the media rounds this morning. The government, despite experiencing a small uptick in the polls yesterday, is still working overtime to sell their budget and the tax changes that passed at the end of last week.
I’ve got my coffee, I hope you’ve got yours, let’s get stuck in.
Happy last day of the financial year, to those who celebrate.
For reasons best known to accountants, tomorrow is the day when a whole heap of legal changes kick in: minimum wage rises, payday super, parental leave tweaks and a lot more.
We’ve got a handy summary of all of them for you:
Tom McIlroy
Australian engagement with Asia ‘facing existential crisis’
Anthony Albanese’s special envoy for the Indian Ocean, the Labor MP Tim Watts, says Australia is running a serious risk by not building more engagement with key Asian neighbours.
Launching a new parliamentary report, Watts has warned schools, universities and businesses are not building sufficient understanding of Asian culture, languages and history, despite skills for the region now becoming “a vital sovereign capability”.
He paints a worrying picture. Enrolments in south-east Asian languages have fallen by 75% since 2005 at Australian universities, with only about 500 students in the country studying Indonesian. Just 3.3% of year 12 students studied a priority Asian language in 2023.
Australia’s diplomatic and thinktank population size is insufficient for independent foreign policy, the report warns, with the capability of Asia experts today described as the product of investments made a generation ago. Similar investments are not being made by current governments.
“Building Asia capability in Australia requires sustained national policy focus over the long term,” Watts says.
The dividends of these efforts, and the costs of inaction, are not realised within a single electoral cycle. Asia capability has always been too difficult to tackle today, and too easy to leave to a future government.
The report calls for a new 10-year national Asia capability strategy, a network of “leader schools” and renewed investment in immersion experiences and higher education courses.
‘Paul Hogan nailed it,’ Albanese says in praise of the actor’s One Nation critique
Caitlin Cassidy
The prime minister also used his 7.30 appearance to push back against Pauline Hanson’s advocacy for a “monocultural” society, describing multiculturalism as “who we are as Australians” and shouted out Paul Hogan after the veteran actor called the One Nation leader a “pelican”.
Albanese had been asked to define multiculturalism, as many politicians have been pressed by journalists to do since Hanson’s address at the National Press Club (with varying levels of competency – Andrew Hastie called it an “extreme” and “politically loaded word”).
Hanson used Hogan as a representative of a “monocultural” Australia that she wished to see returned but the actor dismissed her as “living in the past” and pointed out “we’re all migrants”. Albanese said:
It’s who we are as Australians, and I thought that Paul Hogan nailed it today as well. We’ve never been a monocultural society … We are a modern country that is multicultural in our nature. That means that we have respect for each other.
Albanese was also asked about support for One Nation, which has dipped in a recent poll but remains hovering around 30%. Pressed on why so many Australians believed Labor “don’t understand them”, he replied:
What my job is to do is to represent the national interest. That’s what I do to respect every voter … Pauline Hanson has a long political career. But we have seen the rise of populist rightwing parties throughout the western world.
Albanese said that was something that reflected a “range of frustrations”, but the government “firstly and primarily” was fixed on addressing cost-of-living pressures.
Housing reforms are about making system ‘fairer’ for young people, Albanese says
Caitlin Cassidy
The prime minister says he “doesn’t want to live in a society that’s defined by intergenerational inequity” after clearance rates fell below 50% in most major capital cities after the government’s housing reforms.
Appearing on ABC’s 7.30 program on Monday evening, Anthony Albanese pushed back at criticism that a post-budget fall in housing prices was evidence that Labor had taken the wrong path in legislating the taxation changes:
What is important is that last Saturday, when people went to buy their own home … they weren’t competing against investors who knew that if they could bid an extra $20,000, or $50,000, then taxpayers would essentially be subsidising that by increased deductions.
Albanese reiterated that the housing system was “broken” and pointed to Treasury estimates that house prices would continue to increase but by a lesser amount. Major banks have said prices will remain flat or marginally fall through 2026.
He said:
This is about making the system fairer … We know there’s been a 400% increase in house prices since 1999 – more than double than wages, and that’s why we couldn’t continue to sit back and not pursue this reform … We’ve seen home ownership rates drop for younger Australians. And I don’t want to live in a society that’s defined by intergenerational inequity.”
Greg Jericho has done some interesting analysis on house prices, and whether concern over falling prices is justified, here:
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live politics blog, as the last week of parliament before the winter break rolls on. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories and then it will be Krishani Dhanji with the main action.
Anthony Albanese has defended the government’s housing reforms, telling 7.30 last night that he didn’t want to live in a country defined by intergenerational inequity. More coming up.
He also praised Paul Hogan for pushing back at Pauline Hanson’s attack on multiculturalism, with the prime minister saying the actor “nailed it”. More coming.
