From 23m ago
Brandis says Rudd must have bipartisan support as ambassador despite Trump’s ‘wild’ comments
The former UK ambassador and Coalition minister George Brandis is speaking to ABC radio and he is being very critical of his former colleagues over the Kevin Rudd mini storm, sparked by Donald Trump’s comments.
Brandis says the resulting storm has all been a bit much:
I think this has been rather overinterpreted. Donald Trump is infamous for making rather wild and off-the-cuff claims that don’t in the end amount to very much, so it’s obviously something that the government should keep an eye on but I wouldn’t overinterpret it.
Asked about how Trump’s answer came about, Brandis says:
I know Nigel Farage – he’s a charming charlatan who’s building a reputation as a broadcaster in the United States, obviously.
He is interested in attracting as much importance to his interviews as possible, but I don’t think Nigel Farage has views on this matter.
I think it’s very important that Australia’s senior diplomatic representatives, whether they be career diplomats or political appointees, should have bipartisan support because, if they don’t, it diminishes their authority, and therefore diminishes their influence in the country to which they’re accredited. And that’s plainly not in Australia’s national interest. Now, when the appointment of Dr Rudd was announced in December of the year before last, it wasn’t criticised on a party basis in Australia.
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The former UK ambassador and Coalition minister George Brandis is speaking to ABC radio and he is being very critical of his former colleagues over the Kevin Rudd mini storm, sparked by Donald Trump’s comments.
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Brandis says the resulting storm has all been a bit much:
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I think this has been rather overinterpreted. Donald Trump is infamous for making rather wild and off-the-cuff claims that don’t in the end amount to very much, so it’s obviously something that the government should keep an eye on but I wouldn’t overinterpret it.
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Asked about how Trump’s answer came about, Brandis says:
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I know Nigel Farage – he’s a charming charlatan who’s building a reputation as a broadcaster in the United States, obviously.
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He is interested in attracting as much importance to his interviews as possible, but I don’t think Nigel Farage has views on this matter.
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I think it’s very important that Australia’s senior diplomatic representatives, whether they be career diplomats or political appointees, should have bipartisan support because, if they don’t, it diminishes their authority, and therefore diminishes their influence in the country to which they’re accredited. And that’s plainly not in Australia’s national interest. Now, when the appointment of Dr Rudd was announced in December of the year before last, it wasn’t criticised on a party basis in Australia.
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The Albanese government has announced that from Saturday it will implement several key recommendations of the migration review, released in December.
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These include:
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Lifting English language requirements for student visas from IELTS 5.5 to 6.0 and for graduate visas from IELTS 6.0 to 6.5.
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New powers to suspend high-risk education providers from recruiting international students come into force, meaning the highest risk providers will be issued with warning notices giving them six months to improve standards or they will be suspended from recruiting international students.
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A new genuine student test will be introduced to further crack down on international students looking to come to Australia primarily to work, rather than study. This test will ask students to answer questions about their study intentions and their economic circumstances, with a declaration to be made that they understand what it means to be a genuine student.
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To avoid visitor visas being used as a way to subvert offshore student visa integrity checks, the government will be increasing the imposition of “no further stay” conditions on visitor visas.
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Hello and welcome to parliament Friday (there is no sitting tomorrow).
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Thank you very much to Martin for getting the blog warmed up – you have a chilly Amy Remeikis with you for most of the day (Canberra has embraced a cold snap).
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My third coffee is brewing, so let’s get into it.
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China’s foreign affairs minister, Wang Yi, is preparing for business discussions after holding high-level diplomatic talks with Penny Wong, AAP reports.
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At Parliament House in Canberra yesterday the Australian foreign affairs minister met with Wang, who is the most senior Chinese official to visit Australia since 2017.
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Wang also met with the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and the opposition leader, Peter Dutton.
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He is expected to meet with former prime minister Paul Keating in addition to business leaders in Sydney today.
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Keating has been scathing of the Aukus security pact, under which Australia will acquire nuclear-powered submarines.
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He has also taken swipes at Australian media outlets over what he claims is anti-China coverage.
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Australian prime minister Paul Keating","caption":"Former Australian prime minister Paul Keating.","credit":"Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP"}}],"attributes":{"pinned":false,"keyEvent":true,"summary":false},"blockCreatedOn":1710962886000,"blockCreatedOnDisplay":"15.28 EDT","blockLastUpdated":1710968684000,"blockLastUpdatedDisplay":"17.04 EDT","blockFirstPublished":1710964945000,"blockFirstPublishedDisplay":"16.02 EDT","blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone":"16.02","title":"Wang Yi to meet Paul Keating and business leaders in Sydney","contributors":[],"primaryDateLine":"Wed 20 Mar 2024 17.26 EDT","secondaryDateLine":"First published on Wed 20 Mar 2024 15.28 EDT"},{"id":"65fab2198f08986efb4588c1","elements":[{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement","html":"
The Australian Council of Social Services has released its pre-budget submission, calling to raise the current rate of youth allowance ($45 a day) and jobseeker ($55) to the rate of the pension ($80).
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It wants supplementary payments for illness, disability and single parenthood, and an increase to the remote area allowance which has not been lifted since 2000.
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The submission also calls for:
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Changes to property tax concessions including limiting negative gearing so expenses can only be offset against income from the same class of investment
Reducing the capital gains tax discount from 50% to 25%; and
Introducing a 15% levy on superannuation investment income post-retirement, to pay for aged care
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The Acoss chief executive, Cassandra Goldie, said:
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As we approach this budget, we’re witnessing a level of financial distress that we haven’t seen since the recession of the early 1990s … People living on woefully low income support payments are doing things like eating one meal a day, turning off the fridge at night to save electricity and cutting diabetes medication by half to make it last longer.
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Finally lifting jobseeker and related payments to liveable levels will provide effective, immediate relief to people who need it most who will get no relief at all from the stage three tax cuts. Raising income support provides targeted investment as we enter a period of rising unemployment. It’s not only compassionate but also economically wise.
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The defence minister, Richard Marles, and the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, will hold high-level talks with their UK counterparts in Canberra today, Australian Associated Press reports.
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Marles will host Grant Shapps and Wong will host David Cameron in separate meetings before a joint meeting in Adelaide on Friday.
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The British ministers are in Australia as part of annual Aukmin talks as the two nations, alongside the United States, prepare to advance the Aukus alliance under which Canberra will acquire nuclear-propelled submarines.
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Friday’s trip to Adelaide is set to include a trip to the Osborne shipyard, where the nuclear submarines are to be built.
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A defence announcement is expected.
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Defence, climate action and clean energy, cyber, and economic security will feature in the discussions.
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The longstanding relationship between Australia and Britain had been strengthened by the trilateral alliance, co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Aukus Aaron Violi said.
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“These visits are vital as we continue to strengthen our partnership under the pact and collaborate in our shared interests,” the Liberal MP said.
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Good morning and welcome to our rolling politics coverage. I’m Martin Farrer, serving up some of the top overnight stories before Amy Remeikis fires up her work station.
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Confirming what many already know when surveying real estate websites, figures out today show that affordable housing is beyond the reach of people living in Australia’s eastern capitals. According to new Parliamentary Library analysis released by the Greens, the average annual salary needed to buy a home without financial stress is $164,400. Only in two cities – greater Perth and Darwin – will you find a unit that doesn’t put the average earner under housing stress.
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Such financial matters will begin to dominate politics as the build-up to the federal budget mounts. Advocates are calling this morning for the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, to increase welfare payments and to target investments to combat rising unemployment. The Australian Council of Social Service wants the Albanese government to boost jobseeker and youth allowance to at least $80 per day, up from $55 and $45 respectively. More coming up.
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Parliamentary crossbenchers have backed a call from Lidia Thorpe for the federal government to address long called-for reforms in landmark reports on Indigenous deaths in custody and child removals. Thorpe, the Victorian independent senator, said the Australian Human Rights Commission should be empowered to oversee progress on the key Closing the Gap measures.
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China’s foreign affairs minister, Wang Yi, is still in Australia – today he is due to visit Sydney for meetings including with business leaders and (somewhat controversially) Paul Keating. Meanwhile, the Australian defence minister, Richard Marles, and the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, will hold high-level talks with their UK counterparts in the nation’s capital today.
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Key events
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Brandis says he is ‘not a fan’ of Donald Trump
What does George Brandis think of Donald Trump?
Brandis:
I’m not a fan of Donald Trump.
I am concerned about the isolationist tendencies that are evident in the Republican party but particularly among the Trump Republicans.
I worry about his lukewarm support for Nato.
I worry about his relative warmth towards Vladimir Putin, one of the most evil men in the world, and his failure to be more outspoken about the invasion of Ukraine and other outrages like the killing of Alexei Navalny.
So it does trouble me.
But that having been said, I think the enduring nature of the relationship between Australia and the United States means that it doesn’t matter who’s the president of the United States or who the government of Australia it may be from time to time, that relationship will always be sound.
Brandis says negative commentary about Rudd ‘diminishes Australia’s influence’
So what does George Brandis think of the negative commentary his former colleagues have been running since Nigel Farage asked his leading question and Donald Trump responded, despite not seeming to know who Kevin Rudd was?
Brandis:
I do think that it is very much in Australia’s national interest that senior diplomatic appointees should have bipartisan support, as Dr Rudd has had hitherto.
I do think it is important to to put this into context. Now, in Washington, as in London, it is more common than not for the senior Australian diplomat to be a person who’s had senior political experience at senior cabinet level.
And that has worked well.
It’s worked on both sides of politics in Washington with Arthur Sinnodinos and, before him, Kim Beazley, and before that years earlier, Andrew Peacock and others as well.
And when a person from either side of politics is asked to do those, those jobs, then unless it appears at the time of their appointment that there is a disqualifying factor and, in Dr Rudd’s case, there didn’t appear to be, and I don’t think there is, then they should have bipartisan support.
Because if they don’t, as I said before, it diminishes their authority and therefore it diminishes Australia’s influence in the foreign capital in which they have to work.
Asked about Barnaby Joyce’s ‘cooked’ comments, George Brandis (who sat in a joint party room with Joyce and around a cabinet table with him) says:
Well, look, Barnaby is entitled to his view. I think we’re also getting ahead of ourselves. I mean, it’s if Donald Trump were to be elected, then he would take office nearly a year, hence, there’s a lot of water to go under the bridge.
And if in that eventuality, it did become problematic, then, no doubt the situation could be reassessed and revisited, but there’s no I don’t think there is sufficient reason to believe, on the basis of a few throwaway remarks to Nigel Farage, that there is a deep problem here.
Brandis says Rudd has ‘plainly done a very good job’ in US
George Brandis went on to defend Kevin Rudd and the job he has been doing.
Dr Rudd has plainly done a very good job in the time since he’s been there – in particular, by landing the Aukus deal through a very divided Congress last year on a bipartisan basis.
This is in Washington, in which there is very little bipartisanship at the moment, but he was able to get that through Congress on a bipartisan basis.
And I think he has been a very good appointment as the opposition, I think, acknowledged at the time his appointment was made.
Brandis says Rudd must have bipartisan support as ambassador despite Trump’s ‘wild’ comments
The former UK ambassador and Coalition minister George Brandis is speaking to ABC radio and he is being very critical of his former colleagues over the Kevin Rudd mini storm, sparked by Donald Trump’s comments.
Brandis says the resulting storm has all been a bit much:
I think this has been rather overinterpreted. Donald Trump is infamous for making rather wild and off-the-cuff claims that don’t in the end amount to very much, so it’s obviously something that the government should keep an eye on but I wouldn’t overinterpret it.
Asked about how Trump’s answer came about, Brandis says:
I know Nigel Farage – he’s a charming charlatan who’s building a reputation as a broadcaster in the United States, obviously.
He is interested in attracting as much importance to his interviews as possible, but I don’t think Nigel Farage has views on this matter.
I think it’s very important that Australia’s senior diplomatic representatives, whether they be career diplomats or political appointees, should have bipartisan support because, if they don’t, it diminishes their authority, and therefore diminishes their influence in the country to which they’re accredited. And that’s plainly not in Australia’s national interest. Now, when the appointment of Dr Rudd was announced in December of the year before last, it wasn’t criticised on a party basis in Australia.
Barnaby Joyce claims Rudd ‘cooked’ if Trump re-elected
Barnaby Joyce has been asked on breakfast television (the obvious place to have nuanced debates on diplomacy) what he thinks of Donald Trump’s comments on the US ambassador, Kevin Rudd.
Sky News Australia asked Nigel Farage to ask Trump about Rudd in his interview with the Republican presidential nominee.
Trump did not seem to know who Rudd was. And said if he continued to be hostile, he wouldn’t last as ambassador for very long.
Countries choose their own ambassadors, not foreign governments, so this is all a bit of a storm in a teacup. Australia will choose diplomats who they believe will best achieve Australia’s aims, and that is the method regardless of who is leading the country they are going to.
Enter Joyce who told the Nine network this morning:
If Trump or President Trump becomes President Trump mark two, because it’s going to affect our relationship with the United States, because Trump will roll over and everything will be sweet.
No, he won’t, he won’t. Trump will do lots and lots and lots of things, which we will have lots of time to speak about, but rolling over won’t be one of them.
And once he sets a path, I think that, Rudd’s cooked.
Might as well drag him back, send him to another country, send him over to France or, I don’t know, The Hague or make him deputy secretary of the United Nations. I don’t know, do something else with him. There’s lots of lots of other jobs, lots of wonderful Pacific islands. They need Kevin.
Vamvakinou says killing in Gaza ‘has to end’
Maria Vamvakinou continued:
The war in Gaza has touched members of my constituency profoundly, both those who have directly had family members killed and those who are appalled and distressed by what is happening there.
I want to pay tribute to the extraordinary resilience of those who, despite their losses and profound feelings of grief, have come together to comfort each other and to rally behind the people of Gaza.
They have become the voice of those engulfed by this catastrophe. They have built support networks and embraced with compassion those who have come to our electorate from Gaza.
I pay tribute to the organisations who stepped up 166 days ago calling for a ceasefire, for their advocacy, offering prayers and holding community vigils: Ilim College, MyCentre, Islamic Community Milli Gorus and the countless others in my electorate, from across communities, who are doing inspiring work and are deserving of our recognition.
This killing has to end.
The children and other people of Gaza have a right to life and to a future, and the Palestinian people have to have their right to self-determination realised.
Maria Vamvakinou defends UNRWA
The Labor member for Calwell, Maria Vamvakinou, followed in her Moreton colleague’s footsteps and used the adjournment debate to speak on the situation in Gaza.
Vamvakinou spoke in the parliament in October last year “and asked the chamber to imagine what would happen in the event of Israel’s invasion on a civilian population of over 2 million people living in the most densely populated place in the world”. After going through the devastation, Vamvakinou asked:
This devastation is the result of 70,000 tonnes of explosives dropped on Gaza, the equivalent of several nuclear bombs.
I now ask this question: what has Israel achieved?
What is it achieving, if not the killing and forced starvation of innocent civilians and the destruction of homes and the displacement of people?
The Israeli army, with unlimited supply lines, rages against a civilian population that it besieges, kills, displaces and starves.
Vamvakinou then turned to UNRWA and defended the agency:
In the midst of all of this human tragedy, there are those who decry the government’s decision to resume funding to UNRWA, going further by demanding that UNRWA be defunded altogether.
These are the usual suspects that hurl unsubstantiated allegations against the only agency that has the capacity to provide lifesaving support for the Palestinian people.
UNRWA’s humanitarian and development mandate is central to the assistance and protection of Palestinian refugees, including those who are victims of this humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
I did not support my government’s decision to initially pause funding for UNRWA and I now welcome the government’s unpausing of that funding.
Never has UNRWA’s job been more urgent and more critical now and moving forward under its international mandate.
Chris Bowen says LNP ‘failed to support the gas code’
The energy minister, Chris Bowen, has also responded to the AEMO gas report (you can catch up with Peter Hannam’s report here.)
Bowen:
The Albanese government’s plan is about delivering a more reliable, resilient, firmed renewable energy system, with the gas code shoring up domestic supply of gas to support the grid and Australian industry.
The LNP need to explain why they failed to support the gas code when the Greens tried to disallow it, which analysis after analysis shows is increasing domestic supply and driving down gas prices.
The LNP ‘gas led recovery’ was more like a ‘gas-lit’ policy that failed to deliver affordable energy to Australian industry and our domestic energy market.
Gas body says short-term supply outlook ‘bleak’
The Australian Pipeline and Gas Association has seized on what it is calling the “bleakest short-term gas supply outlook” modelled by Aemo.
The APGA chief executive, Steve Davies, said:
Gas infrastructure companies have invested to help solve this crisis without long-term contracts that provide certainty. Governments must act to de-risk gas investments, which are essential if we are to close coal power stations and support intermittent renewables during the energy transition. For gas-powered generation, this means inclusion in the capacity investment scheme.
There is a future gas strategy in the works, which the industry is consulting with the government on.
