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Coalition and Labor expected to sign off on gambling reform deal
It’s all coming to a head today on gambling with members of the Coalition meeting late yesterday evening to discuss a range of amendments to the government’s bill to tackle online wagering advertising.
Guardian Australia understands there are 15 negotiated reforms that have been agreed to, including for a three-year review of the legislation. But they need final sign off by each party which should happen later this morning when both the Coalition and government party rooms meet.
Yesterday the government announced it would create a new single-service opt-out register for gambling ads – an idea similar to the Do Not Call register for spam calls.
Key events
AFP to review melon memo leak
The Australian federal police has told Liberal shadow defence minister, James Paterson that it will review the leak of a memo sent by Japanese diplomats to the Australian government over melon-gate.
Just when you thought that story was all over …
Last week it was reported that a memo from Japan had downplayed the PM’s appearance on the ‘Bush Deep’ podcast, and said they didn’t believe Anthony Albanese’s comments or hand gestures were done with “ill will”.
Paterson and shadow foreign minister, Ted O’Brien, then referred that leak to the AFP.
The AFP has responded in a letter, seen by Guardian Australia, which says it takes allegations of unauthorised disclosures of correspondence seriously. It’s been referred to the Special Investigations Command.
Coalition offers ultimatum on widow tax and NDIS
Angus Taylor has said the opposition will only support the government’s NDIS bill if it first removes the so-called widow tax in the government’s budget changes.
This morning, Jim Chalmers told ABC News Breakfast that the government is working through those changes, and has released draft legislation (which we knew).
Last week, the opposition tried to suspend standing orders in the parliament to get Labor to bring the bill on immediately.
Chalmers says he’ll engage in good faith:
On the NDIS – this is all about saving the NDIS from itself, making it sustainable so it can continue to deliver a decent standard of care for Australians who need and deserve that. That’s our motivation here. And it should be supported, our changes should be supported in the Senate in that light and on its merits.
The government made it clear we were addressing [the widow tax]. We already released draft legislation. We have consulted on that. We made it abundantly clear that this is a change that we’ll be making. Now, if the opposition wants to do that quicker, of course we’ll engage with them in good faith.
Chalmers calls gambling amendments ‘very substantial changes’
Treasurer Jim Chalmers says the opt-out register on gambling advertising will be revenue neutral, because the gambling industry will have to cover the costs.
He also says there will be changes to curb some inducements – but not an all out ban on inducements like many have pushed for, and was recommended in the landmark “you win some, you lose more” parliamentary report that was handed down more than three years ago.
Chalmers tells ABC News Breakfast:
These changes that we’re proposing are very substantial changes. And they will make it much easier for people to opt out of this advertising. At the same time, as we make it easier for the regulator to enforce the rules around inducements.
I understand people’s concern about inducements. And the minister and the government does as well. I think primarily there’s an important role for the regulator to crack down on and enforce these inducements.
Ruston raises ‘serious concerns’ over automation in proposed NDIS changes
Anne Ruston says the changes the government has made to the aged care system, by automating parts of the assessment process has made the system worse.
Critics, experts and those in the system say that the algorithm tool has no human override function once a funding decision for an aged care package has been determined.
Ruston tells RN Breakfast:
There’s absolutely no doubt that the implementation of the reforms has made everything worse for older Australians … the government’s got a lot to do to fix the implementation of these once-in-a-generation reforms that should have and could have and still can be what they were intended to be, but they just aren’t being rolled out like that.
She says she’s very concerned about what automation might look like under the proposed changes to the national disability insurance scheme.
If the automation that we’re seeing in aged care is transferred over into the NDIS, yes I have very serious concerns about that. We saw 250,000 older Australians reassessed under aged care.
Are we talking over 750,000 Australians who live with disability who possibly need to be reassessed? If they’ve got an algorithm that’s as botched as the one we’ve got in aged care, well we would have very serious concerns and certainly we’ll be raising those matters.
‘Sensible, considered’ gambling package on the table, Ruston says
Anne Ruston says the deal on gambling reforms that will be considered by the Coalition party room today is sensible and considered, though not everyone gets what they want.
She tells RN Breakfast the shadow communications minister, Sarah Henderson, walks the line between protecting vulnerable people and allowing people to have “a bit of a flutter”.
There’s a wide range of views that sit within our party room, and I think what Sarah sought to do is to try and walk a line down the middle so that not everybody gets everything that they want. Certainly the package that I’ve seen so far looks like a very sensible package, a very considered package … I’m hopeful that the party room will accept that, but I’m not going to get ahead of my party room.
Asked whether she shares concerns that the opt-out model will be difficult to implement, she says these things are “never easy”.
Instead of actually talking about what the problems are, let’s all put our collective heads together and work out how we can actually put things in place that protect vulnerable Australians.
Coalition and Labor expected to sign off on gambling reform deal
It’s all coming to a head today on gambling with members of the Coalition meeting late yesterday evening to discuss a range of amendments to the government’s bill to tackle online wagering advertising.
Guardian Australia understands there are 15 negotiated reforms that have been agreed to, including for a three-year review of the legislation. But they need final sign off by each party which should happen later this morning when both the Coalition and government party rooms meet.
Yesterday the government announced it would create a new single-service opt-out register for gambling ads – an idea similar to the Do Not Call register for spam calls.
Australia should adopt AI ‘everywhere we can’, Labor minister says
Josh Butler
Labor minister Andrew Charlton says Australia should adopt AI “everywhere we can”, arguing the country should be doing more to produce new artificial intelligence models – not just build more datacentres or import foreign models.
In a speech to the Australian National University this morning, Charlton – the assistant minister for science, technology and the digital economy – estimates up to 20% of Australians are already paying for an AI subscription, as well as one in three businesses, for a “reasonable estimate” of $5-8bn a year and rising by up to 40% each quarter.
According to advance speech notes shared by his office, Charlton’s speech laments that “the overwhelming majority of those payments [are] flowing offshore. In effect, we are creating a new import bill.”
He estimates that number could reach $20-40bn annually within a decade, and discussed whether Australia should “try to reduce this dependence on foreign AI”.
“Simply building data centres in Australia does not necessarily mean that Australia captures the economics of AI. We can supply the land. We can supply the electricity. We can host the machines. And still find that much of the value – and many of the economic rents – flow offshore,” he will tell ANU.
Instead, Charlton argues Australia should do more in all parts pf the AI supply chain, not just datacentres and electricity but developing the models themselves – which capture most of the AI dollar.
Australia faces two tasks in the age of AI. First, use it. Adopt AI everywhere we can, to lift the productivity of Australian workers and Australian businesses.
Second, build around it. Create the companies, the capabilities, the intellectual property and the complementary assets that ensure Australians capture a meaningful share of the value AI creates.
Charlton argues that AI would not “automatically” lift living standards for all Australians unless there was a sustained effort to properly harness both the technology itself and its associated industrial boom.
Krishani Dhanji
Good morning, Krishani Dhanji here with you, thanks to Martin Farrer for getting us started.
It’s going to be a gambling reform-heavy day today, with a deal on the verge of being inked between the Coalition and government. We’ll have some more details shortly.
Let’s get stuck in!
The study also found that Peter Dutton was the least curious of opposition leaders covered by the study, asking just 15% of his party’s allotment of questions.
The paper opens with a contrasting case:
At 2pm on 4 July 2019, as the Speaker called on questions without notice, the then Australian Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese, rose to ask the first question. He then asked the second, and the third. By the end of Question Time that day, he had asked all 11 questions from the opposition; 10 of them directed at the then Prime Minister, Scott Morrison.
So why this trend towards focusing on the PM in question time? The paper explains:
The growing focus on political leaders reflects a long-term process of increasing personalisation of politics – the idea that individual politicians’ behaviour and characteristics have become more important relative to the parties to which they belong.
However, it warns:
A more leader-centred Question Time may increase media visibility and sharpen political responsibility by clarifying who is being held accountable. At the same time, sustained concentration on party leaders (especially the Prime Minister) may crowd out effective parliamentary oversight of policy implementation and administrative performance.
Julia Gillard subjected to greater level of question time attack than other prime ministers
Julia Gillard is the most put-upon prime minister in question time in recent times, according to a new academic study reported by Australian Associated Press.
More than 21,000 question time questions from the opposition were tracked from 1981 to 2025, taking in the tenures of 10 prime ministers.
The study found prime ministers were asked just 26% of questions back in the early 1980s, but have fielded roughly half of all opposition queries in the past decade.
“It’s part of an overall pattern over time of politics becoming more personalised or centralised around party leaders,” the study’s lead author, Australian Catholic University political scientist Daniel Casey, told AAP.
Question time is increasingly becoming a heavyweight title fight … while ministers are being let off the hook.
Top of the pops – receiving 62% of all questions from the then Tony Abbott-led opposition – was Gillard.
Casey said a wealth of research showed female leaders were subjected to higher levels of attack than their male counterparts.
It was the period with the lowest [level of the] leader of the opposition asking questions, and instead they used their deputy leader, Julie Bishop … the opposition really went out of their way to get their women to ask questions.
Labor gambling opt-outs show they ‘don’t know how the internet works’, Greens say
Luca Ittimani
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has claimed Labor’s proposal to let Australians opt-out of all gambling ads online doesn’t account for how the internet works.
The government has promised a “one-stop shop” to opt-out of the ads online, in its latest gambling reform bill introduced on Monday. It has not explained how an opt-out register could work and government sources have conceded it would be a complex measure.
Hanson-Young told the ABC’s 7.30 on Monday the Greens would not support the “smokescreen” bill. She said the government had told her it wouldn’t pursue a stronger alternative measure, a system requiring Australians to opt in to seeing gambling ads, because such a system would effectively ban the ads.
On the opt-out proposal, she said:
The idea that you can opt-out of all corners of the internet – I mean, it just beggars belief that any serious policy brain has put this forward. I don’t know whose idea it was. Maybe it was Angus Taylor’s, maybe it was the prime minister’s, but it’s certainly come from someone who doesn’t know how the internet actually works.
Labor hopes to pass the bill with Coalition support this week. Hanson-Young said there were “good people in the Liberal party who want this law to go further”, adding:
But they are being ignored … I think what’s happened is that Angus Taylor is not up to the job. He is a weak leader. And I think he’s been spooked by Pauline Hanson and One Nation.
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live politics blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories and then it will be Krishani Dhanji with the main action.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has claimed Labor’s proposal to let Australians opt-out of all gambling ads online doesn’t account for how the internet works. More details in a moment.
