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Liberals’ refusal to collaborate is out of step with mainstream Australia, treasurer says

The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, spoke in Brisbane earlier this morning responding to the opposition’s decision not to attend the government’s upcoming jobs summit.

The September summit plans to bring together representatives from business, industry, union and community sectors. Sussan Ley labelled it a “stunt” on Sky News earlier today.

Chalmers said he’s disappointed but not surprised the opposition won’t be attending.

Peter Dutton is always looking for an excuse to trash consensus and to trash collaborative efforts everyone else is engaged in. His position does not reflect the position of mainstream Australia, the position taken by the business community, by the union movement, by different levels of government, different political persuasions of state governments and local councils. … He is a destructive figure in a country that wants to collaborate and seek consensus. We are representing those efforts, guiding and leading those efforts to work together at the same time as he’s tried to wreck it. He will come up with all kinds of excuses for why he knocked back this invitation.

Chalmers flagged the government will later publish the full invitation details.

We will make it clear down the track who else has been invited and accepted.

Benita Kolovos

Victorian Liberals’ media director quits

Victorian opposition leader Matthew Guy’s director of communications has quit, less than 48 hours after a new chief of staff was appointed to the office.

Lee Anderson, who held the position since August last year, quit on Wednesday after what sources say was a disagreement with Nick McGowan, who was announced as Guy’s new chief of staff on Monday afternoon.

Anderson, a former executive producer at Channel Seven, will be replaced by Alex Woff, who already works in the opposition’s media team. Anja Wolff will be promoted to deputy director of communications.

McGowan replaced Mitch Catlin, who resigned last week after the Age reported he had proposed to ask a Liberal party donor to make more than $100,000 in payments to his marketing company, Catchy Media Marketing and Management, for services described as “supporting business interests”.

Littleproud says Nationals need place at jobs summit to represent regional interests

Following on from the news we brought you earlier that the Nationals leader, David Littleproud, said he would go to the government’s jobs and skills summit if given the invitation, he has now has criticised the government for not inviting the National party to the summit as a failure to represent regional and rural Australia.

Littleproud told SBS:

I believe Labor is failing regional and rural Australia in understanding the unique nature of the requirements for Labor in regional Australia, not just in the agricultural sector but also in terms of skills.

It’s important regional Australia gets a voice, this government … we haven’t had a voice, and I think it’s important we do have a voice at whatever forum is provided.

Littleproud has affirmed he would go if invited. He said:

The leader of the Liberal party gets to determine what the Liberal party does, but on behalf of the National party we’ll make that determination on ourselves.

The first part of the Victorian government’s suburban rail loop, described as the biggest transport project in the state’s history, has been given the green light to go ahead after an assessment of its environmental effects.

The suburban rail loop minister, Jacinta Allan, announced the “important milestone” at a press conference on Wednesday.

She said the state’s environment minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, found the environmental effects of the first 26km of the project, called SRL East, acceptable, with many impacts avoided by putting the line underground.

This section of the 90km underground railway line, which will run between Cheltenham and Box Hill, is expected to be completed by 2035, with an end-to-end trip taking just 22 minutes. It is expected to cost $34.5bn to complete, with early work already under way.

During the federal election, the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, committed $2.2bn to the project. We wrote an explainer on it at the time:

Christopher Knaus

Animal activist case on secret recordings divides high court

We mentioned a little earlier that the high court had rejected a challenge by animal activists to New South Wales laws that criminalise the use of covert recordings.

The case was brought by the Farm Transparency Project, which argued the laws prevented them from exposing animal cruelty and abuse in a way that unfairly imposed on the implied right to freedom of political communication.

In a statement after the decision, Chris Delforce, a Farm Transparency Project activist, said the ruling would not stop his organisation from conducting its important work.

Regrettably, the case avoids deciding whether the ag gag law itself is invalid, and decides only that a person who has unlawfully trespassed to obtain footage of animal cruelty can be forbidden from publishing that footage. We were found to have been such persons.

Despite an enormous amount of work and funds raised by our small organisation and legal team to seek a definitive answer to that question, the court has dodged it.

The strong implication is that a media outlet not involved in any trespass to obtain the footage would have won the case. We call on a media outlet to challenge this ag gag law in the high court.

In a summary of its judgement, the high court said the laws had a legitimate purpose: the protection of privacy. It said:

The high court, by majority, held that [sections 11 and 12 of the Surveillance Devices] Act did not impermissibly burden the implied freedom in their application to, respectively, the communication or publication by a person of a record or report, or the possession by a person of a record, of the carrying on of a lawful activity, at least where the person was complicit in the record or report being obtained exclusively by breach of [section eight of the Surveillance Devices Act].

The court also said the schemes of other states and territories – which contain public interest carve outs – were “not obvious and compelling alternatives”, because they did not “pursue the same purpose and were broader in application”. It said:

Sections 11 and 12 achieved an adequate balance between the benefit they sought to achieve and the adverse effect on the implied freedom.

The case sharply divided the court. Three high court justices dissented from the majority ruling.

Nationals leader says he would go to jobs summit if invited

The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, has told Sky News he would go to the government’s jobs and skills summit if he was invited.

Littleproud’s comments come after the Liberal deputy leader, Sussan Ley, told Sky News earlier this morning no opposition member would attend.

Ley said:

No, because it’s just a stunt … That’s all this is going to be, a talk-fest designed to look after union mates.

The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, had last night extended the liberal leader, Peter Dutton, an invitation to the summit as a gesture the government is serious about finding common ground.

Queensland has reported 3,809 Covid cases over the last reporting period, and 35 deaths. There are 656 people in its hospitals being treated for the virus.

‘I want the rule of law to apply’: Dutton says he’s not criticising Chinese people

Dutton went on to discuss his other concerns surrounding China beyond the military drills, highlighting the Liberals’ record on Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai and taking a strong stance preventing Chinese interference in Australian telecommunications.

If you look back at comments I made as defence minister or home affairs minister, we took a decision in relation to 5G in this country to refuse high-risk vendors like Huawei. We’re standing here looking at a robot which will operate on the 5G network. Autonomous vehicles will operate on a 5G network. Remotely monitored health device [will] also be, you know, over coming years, remotely monitored by health officials with people able to stay at home and out of hospital or aged care facilities, but they need to operate on a network which is secure and it was untenable for us, knowing what we knew through the intelligence and the actions we were seeing from China online, that we would allow that system to be compromised. That’s us standing up for national interests. It’s not a condemnation of people of Chinese interests.

I’m not criticising the Chinese people, far from it. In fact, the complete opposite. I want the rule of law to apply, you know, in our region. I don’t want corrupt practices to take place. I want there to be respectful relationships towards us and I want tows have a respectful relationship towards the Chinese government as well.

China’s status as trading partner doesn’t mean Australia should tolerate bullying – Dutton

The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, speaking in Brisbane earlier this morning ahead of the Chinese ambassador’s address at the National Press Club today, said:

I’ve been at pains to point out you can go back numerous speeches, press conferences I’ve attended where pointed out we have an incredibly diaspora community of people of Asian heritage in our country and they’re in a country like ours because they value peace and they want to be part of a wonderful democracy where we value the rule of law and we call out people like President Putin and President Xi for their activities and actions and we want, as I said a normalised relationship with China.

They’re an important trading partner but we don’t tolerate the sort of bullying behaviour and the reactions we’re seeing to the visit by Speaker Pelosi to Taiwan in the last week. I think a frank [dialogue] is what we need to have.

Dutton went on to say it’s not only the military drills near Taiwan which are concerning, but also other activities like cyber attacks.

The foreign interference, not just the military exercises that we’re seeing now, but the covert activity online, the cyberattacks. Industrial-scale cyberattacks, the collection of people’s health records, of aged care records that we’re seeing China undertake those attacks online at the moment. We can do that in a respectful way and to be condemned for it is an absurdity and we should be honest about the situation we face. If we’re not, we’ll find ourselves two or three or five years down the track on a path we can’t correct.

The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has this morning said Australia must continue to call out the actions of the Chinese government to ensure peace in the region. He has compared the situation in Taiwan to that in the Ukraine.

We have to be realistic about where we are in the world at the moment. Over the last couple of years, we’ve spoken about our region being in a period similar to the 1930s and that’s the reality of it. It’s what the intelligence showed to us when we were in government and it’s clearly the intelligence that the government is reading at the moment. It’s the intelligence that the French are seeing, the Canadians, the Brits, the Americans and it’s a time for countries to come together to condemn the actions of President Putin in the Ukraine – which we’ve done collectively.

Of course you could argue that the world could have spoken up more against President Putin to prevent him going into Ukraine. The carnage that we’ve seen in the Ukraine we don’t want to see repeated in Taiwan and so I think it’s appropriate to be frank and honest and open. If we don’t shine a light on the activities and behaviour of somebody like President Putin or bike President Xi, we will find ourselves in conflict in this region.

The Chinese Communist party has been clear about their intent in relation to Taiwan and nobody’s exaggerating. Nobody is making this up. If we want to be frank and honest, then that’s better than a model of appeasement. I’ve always believed the only way to maintain peace in the region is if we call out bullying behaviour and bad practice and if we do that we can have … a normalised relationship with China.

Calls for energy-efficient building code to stop Australians living in ‘glorified tents’

Energy and climate experts, property developers, architects and health professionals have joined forces to call for a building code that will stop Australians living in “glorified tents”, AAP reports.

The Property Council boss, Ken Morrison, says Australia has let itself fall behind international standards over the past 10 years and now is the time to catch up.

Crippling power bills and deaths from increasingly hot summers and cold winters have given fresh impetus to minimum energy-efficiency requirements for new homes.

Advocates say strengthening energy provisions in the national code and mandating a 7-star minimum energy standard would reduce the cost of living, cut emissions and improve the quality of Australia’s housing stock.

The Energy Efficiency Council chief executive, Luke Menzel, said today:

As we’ve learned in the pandemic, our homes are our shelter and places of refuge.

Improved energy-efficiency standards are a “no-brainer” and will play a big part in cutting emissions, he said.

The call for long-sought amendments to the national construction code comes two weeks ahead of a meeting of federal, state and territory ministers.

The Climate Council chief executive, Amanda McKenzie, said:

This is Australia’s opportunity to improve its energy efficiency standards which will make our homes safer, more efficient, more affordable and help to address climate change.

Many Australians are currently living in glorified tents.

The statement signed by more than 100 organisations says the stricter code would cut emissions by up to 78m tonnes by 2050 and reduce deaths during extremely cold or hot weather.

The move could also lower the cost of electricity grid upgrades by up to $12.6bn by 2050 and reduce poverty by ensuring higher standards and lower power bills in new social housing and private rentals.

Mandating the 7-star energy rating could slash the average household energy bill by up to $576 a year, according to official data.

The proposed changes to the code include introducing a whole-of-home “energy budget” for fixed appliances for hot water, heating, cooling and pool pumps.

Industry would be granted a 12-month transition period under the proposals.