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Katharine Murphy
Albanese addresses National Press Club
Anthony Albanese is on his feet at the National Press Club after getting a standing ovation from the crowd gathered at the Chifley Research Centre conference. (You’d expect the warm welcome – this audience is party faithful.)
We have a news story this morning previewing this speech.
The prime minister is using this outing to put the voice referendum in the context of democratic decay. He’s basically arguing there are a number of citizens in democracies around the world that feel alienated from political parties and governments.
Albanese says the voice referendum will be an opportunity to bring people in, to give Australians the opportunity to shape and modernise the constitution. He says in an era of populism, misinformation and insurrection, prime ministers have to both include and trust the people.
Quite interesting: that context.
Key events
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NSW Labor opposition leader to outline election pitch
Labor Leader Chris Minns will speak to a crowd of party faithful in the battleground seat of Penrith on Sunday, at NSW Labor’s unofficial campaign launch, ahead of the NSW election on 25 March.
The rally will take place in the key western Sydney seat of Penrith, currently held by Liberal MP Stuart Ayres on a margin of 1.3%.
It comes after a difficult few days for the government, including the release of a scathing auditor general’s report criticising its handling of a bushfire recovery grants scheme.
The scheme saw former deputy premier John Barilaro’s office interfering to effectively exclude Labor-held electorates from receiving funds, the auditor-general found.
Minns said emergency funds should not be handed out with people’s political preferences in mind.
I would have thought common decency would have stepped in long ago and no government would manipulate a process to see a community recover.
Unfortunately, that’s what happens when a group of people have been in power for 12 years.
The premier, Dominic Perrottet, said he would consider possible improvements in light of the report, but denied the funding arrangements were pork barrelling.
Labor will hold a formal campaign launch two weeks out from polling day.
– AAP
Eden Gillespie
NSW premier quizzed about auditor generals report
The NSW premier was also asked about the auditor general’s report which found the process for fast-tracked bushfire recovery grants “lacked integrity”.
The report found thresholds set by the former NSW deputy premier John Barilaro’s office effectively excluded Labor electorates from urgent funding in an “inconsistent and poorly documented” black summer grants program.
NSW premier Dominic Perrottet’s response:
I made it very clear when I became premier through an independent review in relation to grants administration in our state, we adopted all of those recommendations. There should be no politics being played in the administration of grants anywhere in this country. I completely support that.
Perrottet said he had made changes, including amendments to the ministerial code of conduct, to ensure funds “go to where they’re needed”.
Katharine Murphy
Albanese addresses National Press Club
Anthony Albanese is on his feet at the National Press Club after getting a standing ovation from the crowd gathered at the Chifley Research Centre conference. (You’d expect the warm welcome – this audience is party faithful.)
We have a news story this morning previewing this speech.
The prime minister is using this outing to put the voice referendum in the context of democratic decay. He’s basically arguing there are a number of citizens in democracies around the world that feel alienated from political parties and governments.
Albanese says the voice referendum will be an opportunity to bring people in, to give Australians the opportunity to shape and modernise the constitution. He says in an era of populism, misinformation and insurrection, prime ministers have to both include and trust the people.
Quite interesting: that context.
Eden Gillespie
NSW treasurer blames Labor for reopening Pep-11 gas project
NSW’s press conference has now turned to the subject of the controversial Pep-11 gas exploration license.
Guardian Australia revealed on Saturday that Sydney MP, Alex Greenwich, and a coalition of independent political candidates, were attempting to kill Pep-11 by banning the development of the area through a change in NSW law.
It comes after the federal government and Asset Energy agreed to void the former prime minister Scott Morrison’s decision to block further exploration of the gas field before it played out in court.
The NSW treasurer, Matt Kean, told reporters on Sunday that teal federal MPs had failed to stop the Labor government from “reopening the threat of offshore drilling on our coastline on the northern beaches and central coast”.
The only way people living on the northern beaches on the central coast can stop the destruction of our coastline and drilling for offshore gas is by voting for your Liberal National candidate.
We’ve seen that the teals are absolutely ineffective when it comes to protecting our coastal marine parks from the threat of Pep -11.
Eden Gillespie
NSW Liberals promise help with energy bills if re-elected
In their biggest election promise to date, the NSW government says it will give households $250 to spend on energy bills if residents compare plans through the Service NSW website.
The measure will be rolled out on 1 July if the Liberal party wins the NSW election next month and will apply to everyone, including those already on a rebate.
The one-off cost-of-living payment will be given even if NSW households do not change providers, premier Dominic Perrottet said.
This will make a real difference to household budgets across New South Wales and [it’s] part of the Liberals and Nationals’ long-term economic plan to provide support for families and keep New South Wales moving.
The treasurer and minister for energy, Matt Kean, said the plan was “all about ensuring that we help people ease pressure on household budgets”.
The NSW Energy Bill Saver initiative is estimated to cost $500m with two million households expected to participate.
A journalist has asked the NSW premier if the $250 energy bill payment is “a drop in the bucket” and an election “ploy” to “make it look” like the government is addressing cost-of-living pressures.
Perrottet’s response:
We’re making it easy to switch [energy plans] but most importantly, easy to save for families across western Sydney and right across our great state … There is no government anywhere in the country that has the cost-of-living relief and the support for family budgets in the Liberals and Nationals here in New South Wales.
Albanese speaks on Indigenous voice to parliament
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is due to begin his speech at the Chifley Research Centre where he is expected to outline why he is optimistic about the potential for success in the upcoming referendum on the Indigenous voice to parliament.
Australian football players in shock over Saudi-Fifa sponsorship deal
Australian football player Kate Gill has spoken to the ABC this morning about the recently announced sponsorship of Fifa’s women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand by the Saudi’s.
Players have been expressing shock and frustration over the potential sponsorship deal, saying they have largely been left out over the decision to take the money.
Speaking to the ABC this morning, Gill said it was “hard to see how they’ve coalesced to see how visiting Saudi is right for the Women’s World Cup”.
When you look at the surface, you can see that it is a blatant disregard of their human rights treatment when you look at the country itself. LGBTI+ people are still regarded as criminals, and women over there still really face strict restrictions of their rights. And that’s notwithstanding the progressions that have been made as well. It just sat really uncomfortably when it was announced.
Gill said many players were “really avid human rights defenders” and wanted Fifa to listen to its players by rejecting the proposal.
Those decisions then become the athletes. The athletes become the face of those decisions, and it’s really challenging when you don’t have full transparency over why these decisions are made and what has actually gone into the thought process behind this.
It’s putting a lot of pressure on the players. So I think it would be welcomed if they would sit down and have the discussions with the players so they can fully understand and ask questions as to why this needs to happen.
Saudi Arabia has faced a string of human rights abuses in the past. Though Saudi Arabia has passed laws to give women more agency in their lives such as the right to drive, men still remain dominant and control decision-making within the kingdom.
Jamal Khashoggi, a US-based journalist and critic of Saudi Arabia, was murdered by government officials inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
The kingdom has hired US public relations firm, Edelman – a go-to public relations firm for the US oil and gas industry – in a $9.6m deal to clean up its public image. Saudi Arabia is also home to the world’s largest oil company, Saudi Aramco, which reported a 90% increase to their profits in June 2022.
The Women’s World Cup runs from 20 June 20 to 20 August.
Saudi Arab has been named host of the 2027 Asian Cup. The country also has ambitions to host the World Cup in 2030 and the Women’s Asian Cup in 2026.
Increase to Medicare rebate a possibility
The health minister, Mark Butler, says an increase to the Medicare rebate is not off the table, as the federal government tries to address problems in Australia’s healthcare system.
Butler has also hit back at criticisms a Medicare review initiated by the government did not have tangible recommendations to provide immediate relief.
The head of the Australian Medical Association, the peak body representing doctors, said the report had nothing in it to help Australians immediately access more affordable and timely healthcare.
The president, Steve Robson, said while he welcomed the review, there was nothing in the report to ensure Australians struggling to see a GP or facing long operation waitlists were seen any quicker or more affordably.
Butler said he was “surprised” by Robson’s attitude, given AMA vice president Danielle McMullen was a member of the Medicare taskforce and had contributed to the report.
Medicare was established nearly 40 years ago by the Hawke government and while it was still a “shining jewel” in healthcare, when speaking to Sky News on Sunday Butler said the system did not reflect the needs of modern Australians.
Changes to the rebate are not off the table, affordability was a major pressure that we discussed at the task force.
[But] you can’t just put more money into the existing systems. The existing systems do not reflect the needs of Australians today.
Butler said all healthcare groups, including the AMA, who participated in the taskforce recognised reform was needed.
Opposition spokesman Paul Fletcher said the Medicare report was “pretty thin” and Australians would probably have to wait until after the May budget before the government took action.
This government said they were going to protect and restore Medicare and so far they’ve cut the number of sessions you can get funded with psychologists from 20 to 10.
[There’s] a bit of rhetoric but not much performance.
– AAP
Wayward Tasmania ponies reunited with owners
Two wandering ponies have been reunited with their owners after escaping in Tasmania this morning.
Police wrangled the ponies into a temporary paddock in Hillborough Road.
Anyone missing ponies were advised to “please call 131444 to join the Saddle Club” and return “your equine friends”.
But by 9am the ponies had been reunited with their owners – crisis averted.
Megan Davis on Indigenous voice: ‘Doing nothing isn’t an option’
Davis stressed that the voice is “not going to be a top-down mechanism” and stressed that “it’s going to be drawn from communities”.
I made this point to Leeser and Dutton in the meeting – we’re all talking about the same thing. We’re talking about our people in communities, you know, doing the hard yards of keeping our people together and flourishing, and trying to do better for our communities.
The key thing is how do they get that seat at the table? And that’s what the constitution is about, it’s about not allowing the space for politicians to continually silence our voice. It’s to mandate it so that we do have a seat at the table to make sure that the policies and laws are of a better quality and they actually result in outcomes. Because right now, that’s not the case.
Concerns about litigation that may follow where the parliament fails to consult with the voice “has been dealt with” and that it would create a norm of consulting with Indigenous people on laws about them.
They’re required to listen, hear and consider the voice, yes, but there’s no entity in the nation that can veto the work of the Australian parliament.”
Davis says if the referendum fails, there are “downstream risks” for people who have little faith in the Australian political system to deliver change becoming more disenfranchised – but the campaign is “only focused on the “yes”.
We’ve always only been focused on the ‘yes’. We’ve spent five years fighting for reform, where straight off the bat a prime minister said no to us. We were disappointed and we woke up the next day and thought to ourselves, “Let’s just turn every ‘no’ into a ‘yes’.”
So, every time a prime minister has said no, every time a minister has said no, we’ve just taken it as a yes and kept working. So, we’re not looking at any negative consequences of a ‘no’ vote because it’s going to be a ‘yes’ vote.
We believe absolutely, because this has been half a decade since Uluru, in the agency of the Australian people and that the Australian people get, they do get this reform. They understand the importance of having a voice at the table and they also understand that nothing has worked until now. They can see that the status quo doesn’t work. So, doing nothing isn’t an option here.
Voice vote ‘not like the 1999 republic referendum’
Davis says the voice will be critical in allowing Indigenous people input into laws that are made about them because “right now they’re not including our voices from right across the country”.
She also expects another Closing the Gap report that “tells us we’re not closing the gap and, in fact, are going back in some respects”.
All Australians can see that something has to change. This is not like the 1999 republic referendum, where they said, “It ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” All Australians can see that the status quo isn’t working, that something is broken, and it needs to be fixed.
Megan Davis from the Referendum Working Group reveals details of recent meeting with Peter Dutton
Professor Megan Davis from the Referendum Working Group is speaking to ABC Insiders this morning about the proposal for the Indigenous voice to parliament.
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has been in the media over the last few weeks demanding more detail from the government over how the new body will work.
Dutton has 15 specific questions, but Davis said that in a recent meeting Dutton did not ask those questions.
One of the really important parts of that meeting was to explain to him where the voice to parliament comes from. So, we spoke about the 12 constitutional conventions and the national constitutional convention that was held five years ago. We spoke about why the voice to parliament was the primary reform that came out of that. We spoke about the 12 years of constitutional recognition in this country, so we’re in the second decade, and went through the seven processes and 10 reports that exist on this matter.
Davis says Dutton may ask his questions at a later time and “committed to future meetings”.
There’s only so far we can go in terms of those questions. We can’t tell you the address or location of the building of what the voice will be, or what the business cards will look like. We can tell only so much in terms of those questions because, of course, if the voice is successful, what happens in Australian democracy is there is a process that follows. And the inference from a successful voice referendum is that First Nations communities will have some say, or a very large say, in what that voice looks like and the contours of this voice.
Davis said “it’s really critical for the voice to succeed, have legitimacy and be durable”.
There’s only so much detail that we can put forward before a referendum and that will be done – that is the purpose of the three committees that have been working since September, who released communiques with information, who will have information ready for when the referendum bill is stood up.
Public sector board review to end ‘jobs for mates’
The federal government is launching a review of public sector board appointments to ensure they are based on merit rather than politics and “jobs for mates”.
The finance and public service minister, Katy Gallagher, will announce the review in an address to the Chifley 2023 Conference in Canberra on Sunday as part of the Albanese government’s integrity agenda it took to the last election.
The review will be led by Lynelle Briggs AO, a former Australian Public Service commissioner, CEO of Medicare and commissioner on the aged care royal commission.
Her review will focus on clarifying the role of public sector boards and the skills and standards required, making board recruitment more transparent, how ministers are advised on the selection of board members and improving the diversity of board membership.
Gallagher will say the former government’s approach to political appointments “made a mockery of the process and were exploited for political purposes instead of being based on merit”.
We know that half of the Productivity Commission’s board members have a political connection to the Coalition and the administrative appeals tribunal was stacked with appointments with clear Liberal party links.
This review would be about putting an end to the “jobs for mates culture that defined the previous Morrison government’s public sector appointments”.
Gallagher will say that being on a government board should be about what you know, not who you know.
A report will be published after the review is finalised in mid-2023.
– with AAP
Girl dies in suspect shark attack
A teenage girl has been killed in a suspected shark attack in Western Australia after she jumped from her jetski into a river, police said.
The 16-year-old was pulled from the Swan River in Perth with critical injuries. Emergency personnel provided medical assistance at the scene but she died, said Insp Paul Robinson, of Western Australia police.
He said the victim was with her friends on jetskis. “There was possibly a pod of dolphins seen nearby and the young female jumped in the water to swim nearby the dolphins.
The family weren’t there when this took place, however, her friends were and as you can imagine this is an extremely traumatic incident for anyone to witness so obviously we’re offering counselling services to anyone who did witness it or is affected by the incident.
He said the fisheries department had advised him it was unusual for a shark to be so far down the river, which flows through Perth into the Indian Ocean.
Australian leaders must safeguard liberal democracy: PM
Prime minister Anthony Albanese is scheduled to deliver a keynote speech at ALP thinktank the Chifley Research Centre’s conference in Canberra today.
Albanese is expected to warn that Australians should pay attention to the 2021 Capitol insurrection in the US and the recent coup attempt in Brazil as an example of what can happen when people fall “headlong into poisonous conspiracy theories”. He will say leaders need to “heed the warning” of these events and safeguard liberal democracy.
You can read our political editor Katharine Murphy’s report on it here:
Other major speakers include minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney, treasurer Jim Chalmers, and Tony Burke, minister for employment and workplace relations.
Good morning
And welcome to another Sunday morning Guardian live blog.
The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, will deliver a keynote speech at the Chifley Research Centre’s conference in Canberra today. It is expected that he will tell the Labor thinktank that the Indigenous voice to parliament is the next step in reconciliation, while warning that some are working to trigger a culture war over the push for reform.
At 16-year-old girl has died on the Swan River in Perth after a suspected shark attack. The girl was riding a jetski with friends on the water when they noticed a pod of dolphins. The girl jumped in to swim with the dolphins but was attacked soon after and tragically died at the scene.
I’m Royce Kurmelovs, taking the blog through the day. With so much going on out there, it’s easy to miss stuff, so if you spot something happening in Australia and think it should be on the blog, you can find me on Twitter at @RoyceRk2 where my DMs are open.
With that, let’s get started …
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