Dominic Perrottet refuses to answer questions on brother
Tamsin Rose
The New South Wales premier, Dominic Perrottet, has walked out of a press conference after refusing to answer a question about his brother Jean-Claude Perrottet.
Asked why his brother, the secretary of the NSW Young Liberals, was refusing to appear before a parliamentary inquiry into Hills Shire council, Perrottet refused to answer and ended his media event.
The premier had previously demanded the media leave his family out of the press after Jean-Claude and another brother called Charles Perrottet were asked to front the probe.
Charles this week confirmed he would not appear before the committee, calling it a “Labor/Greens circus”.
He said he was a resident of Victoria and as such would not participate.
The premier also refused to answer a question about who he wanted to see replace ousted upper house candidate Peter Poulos.
Key events
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Now we’re getting into energy – in particular, the report from the Australian Energy Market Operator about the desperate need to future-proof our energy system.
Albanese:
The Australian Energy Market Operator have been talking about this for a long period of time … The former government didn’t act on that at all. So we need to do that… If you’re having less investment in new energy, then [that is] energy that’s leaving the system with the closure of coal-fired power plants, then you will have these issues, which is why my government is absolutely determined to provide that certainty for investment through the safeguard mechanism.
Now, the safeguard mechanism was established under legislation by the Abbott government. It is one thing for the Coalition to oppose initiatives and commitments that Labor made in the lead-up to the last election. It’s absurd that they’re opposing their own policy, in spite of the fact that all of the energy market operators, all of industry, be it here in the West, Woodside, BHP, the minerals council, are all saying that the safeguard mechanism is the way to go forward. It’s been designed to make sure that we deal with these issues, and the Coalition, that has become the “no”-alition, who have said no to everything is standing in the way.
When you consult people about matters that affect them, you get better outcomes, PM says of voice
More on the voice: it’s put to the prime minister that there is a disconnect between the issue of the debate about the voice, and issues such as the housing crisis in remote parts of WA and other parts of Australia. He’s asked, how can he convince those struggling families that the voice will result in practical solutions?
Albanese:
Well, we know that when you consult any group of people about matters that affect them, you will get better outcomes. And that is what the voice is. We know as well from experience that where Indigenous Australians have been directly involved in the design of programs – justice, reinvestment, park rangers programs, community health programs – then you get better outcomes.
The reporter says that in some cases Indigenous people haven’t been heard on issues, for example on the cashless debit card; so will the voice be heeded on these issues?
Albanese:
There will be a voice which will be able to articulate the views of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It’s not something that will give a right of veto but it will ensure that where matters directly [affect Aboriginal people] the questions will be asked, not just by us but by you about what the view of the national voice is on particular issues.
Indigenous Australians want to be heard, Albanese says
There’s a bit of back and forth between the journalists in attendance and the prime minister now.
Albanese is asked something about social issues in Indigenous communities – the question isn’t audible – to which he responds:
What did come up was issues of housing. They raised issues of, in general, youth having somewhere to go at night. They raised issues of school retention, and they raised a broad range of issues as well. They were supportive of the constitutional change that will be proposed at the end of the year. It was a great opportunity – and can I thank the traditional owners and pay my respects to them for giving us as well the respect of coming and meeting with myself and Senator Dodson. It was a very humbling experience, frankly, to hear from people who have such real-world experience on the ground. It was very constructive.
As a follow-up, he’s asked whether the people he spoke to in those communities saw the voice to parliament as a long-term solution to those issues. Albanese returns to the same beats he’s hit over the last few days on this in response:
Well, they certainly saw the value in, one, having recognition in our constitution. Our nation’s birth certificate currently doesn’t acknowledge the great privilege that we have of sharing this continent with the oldest continuous culture on earth.
Secondly, they want to be heard. This was an opportunity to listen to them, but a structural body, a voice to parliament, which is enshrined, will ensure that over the long term, we can deal with issues that, we have tried, frankly, other ways for 122 years now since federation – decisions made in Canberra. What we need to do is to make sure that where matters affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people there’s a consultive body.
McGowan confirms state is also funding Port Hedland upgrades for additional $100m
WA Premier Mark McGowan takes the mic. He says the ports project will mean that the state can better export lithium and other minerals, but also to import machinery required to generate renewable energy, including wind turbines.
McGowan explains that the state is also contributing to the project:
It’s a joint funding commitment by the commonwealth and state, the commonwealth very generously is putting in $560m [and the] state is putting in around $100m. It’s overall a $660m project, which is a massive boost for the West Australian economy.
Albanese says he has visited WA more in nine months than Morrison did in nine years
Albanese also mentions the flood recovery in the Kimberley, saying government ministers will be heading up to Fitzroy Crossing and other areas in WA.
The full cabinet has been brought to WA for this trip, and the PM seems to be leaning on a suggestion that his predecessor didn’t pay any attention to what happened in the west:
This morning I had a meeting with Senator Pat Dodson, with the traditional owners throughout the Pilbara, and a really constructive engagement. After the cabinet meeting we’ll be having a community reception with 150 people from the community sector, from the resources sector, from the business community, all wanting to engage with cabinet ministers.
It is a good thing to bring the cabinet out of Canberra. It’s a commitment that I made. We’ll also be having a cabinet meeting in Perth later this year. My government is determined to represent the whole of Australia, and I think I have visited the west now as prime minister more in nine months than the previous prime minister did in nine years. But I am particularly pleased to be here, always working hand in hand with the McGowan government.
Prime minister announces $565m for funding to upgrade Port Hedland
Anthony Albanese is speaking now in Port Hedland, WA, where he’s announcing funding of $565m for upgrades to port infrastructure.
Albanese says:
I’m working with the McGowan government to deliver based upon the strong economy that West Australia is the driver of. And here in Port Hedland, of course, we see something like 4% of our GDP go through this port. It is a great wealth creator here in the Pilbara, and that’s why my government is committing $565m for upgrades to port infrastructure in the Pilbara.
This will make an enormous difference. A common use of facilities will be important for making sure that there is access across the board to export and also to import facilities here at the port.
Woodside logo spray painted on WA parliament
The Woodside Energy logo has been spray painted onto the front doors of the WA parliament this morning to protest the government’s continued investment in fossil fuels.
The woman who spray painted the logo is part of a direct action campaign by a WA-based group called Disrupt Burrup Hub, which is targeting Woodside.
It’s the same group who defaced the Woodside logo onto the Art Gallery of Western Australia’s most significant and internationally renowned painting, Frederick McCubbin’s Down on his luck.
A mother has spray-painted the logo of @WoodsideEnergy across the front doors of WA Parliament to highlight the government’s control by fossil fuel interests.
The DISRUPT BURRUP HUB campaigner is demanding no more industry at Murujuga on the Burrup Peninsula in WA’s North West. pic.twitter.com/HpZRNJNtOO
— DISRUPT BURRUP HUB (@BURRUPHUB) February 21, 2023
You can read more about the McCubbin incident from our arts reporter Kelly Burke:
Caitlin Cassidy
Removing the Attorney General’s Department as the body to administer the foreign influence transparency scheme (Fits) is among a string of recommendations made at a parliamentary joint committee this morning.
Speaking at a review into the scheme, Katherine Mansted, a senior fellow at ANU’s National Security College, said Fits was a “world-leading” instrument, but there was a “pressing need” to recalibrate it so it remained fit for purpose.
Mansted said two key drivers had changed since the establishment of the scheme in 2018 – the strategic environment in Australia had “deteriorated more rapidly than any government policy or strategy anticipated” and adversaries had been closely watching the nation.
[Fits] doesn’t always capture the right information … it is capturing some low-threat activity that distracts from the fundamental purpose of cataloguing and exposing foreign influence … there are blind spots, particularly when it comes to capturing influence that emanates from authoritarian governments, which tends to be more complex, opaque and secret by nature.
It’s not reaching the right audiences in a way that’s meaningful and useful. It needs to be a powerful transparency tool that’s meaningful and used by the public and decision makers across our democracy … it’s not a well-used tool.
Mansted recommended making Fits a more widely used and accessible tool for the public, improving the quality of information on register, better resourcing the regulator and updating it to reflect “the reality that risk from authoritarian governments is different”.
She also suggested it should be considered whether the attorney general was the appropriate body to continue to administer Fits as it moved into its next stage.
Dogs seized by police after infant death on NSW South Coast
Police are investigating the death of a five-week-old baby on the NSW South Coast after seizing two dogs who lived at the family home.
Police said they were called to Moruya Hospital after a baby suffering a head injury was brought in by her parents about 10.40pm on Saturday night.
The baby died shortly after midnight on Sunday.
Police say:
Two Rottweiler-type dogs – which live at the home – have been seized by rangers from the local council.
Inquiries are continuing by officers attached to South Coast Police District.
Renewable investment halved as carbon offset projects doubled, research shows
New research from the Australia Institute shows investment in renewable energy in Australia has halved since 2018, while carbon offsets projects have doubled in 2022 on numbers since 2020.
The report released today raises concerns climate and energy policy is driving investment towards carbon credits of questionable integrity and away from investment in renewables and “genuine” decarbonisation of industry.
The report comes the same day as the Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo) has raised concerns about Australia’s ability to produce enough electricity to meet demand in coming years.
Polly Hemming, the director of Climate & Energy at the Australia Institute, said:
The Federal government is now at the policy crossroad
sbetween investment in renewables and genuine decarbonisation, or the previous government’s creative accounting tricks.Currently Australia has no policies that drive investment into real decarbonisation projects. The safeguard mechanism and the powering the regions fund offer enormous opportunities for genuine emissions reduction, but are poised to syphon money to the carbon offset industry.
Policies like the renewable energy target drive permanent decarbonisation in industry, while offset purchases simply allow polluters to delay this change. But the renewable energy target hasn’t been renewed and there is no policy to incentivise more investment in clean energy, resulting in the slowdown of new renewable energy generation.
It’s no accident that the carbon credit industry is booming in Australia – the federal government encourages offsetting through various policies. When industry or government buys carbon credits to offset emissions – even if they are of high integrity – they are not spending money on technology that permanently displaces fossil fuel use and permanently reduces emissions.
Every day we prevaricate is a day further away from Australia meeting its climate target. This data shows offsets are obstructing climate action in Australia.
Dominic Perrottet refuses to answer questions on brother
Tamsin Rose
The New South Wales premier, Dominic Perrottet, has walked out of a press conference after refusing to answer a question about his brother Jean-Claude Perrottet.
Asked why his brother, the secretary of the NSW Young Liberals, was refusing to appear before a parliamentary inquiry into Hills Shire council, Perrottet refused to answer and ended his media event.
The premier had previously demanded the media leave his family out of the press after Jean-Claude and another brother called Charles Perrottet were asked to front the probe.
Charles this week confirmed he would not appear before the committee, calling it a “Labor/Greens circus”.
He said he was a resident of Victoria and as such would not participate.
The premier also refused to answer a question about who he wanted to see replace ousted upper house candidate Peter Poulos.
Josh Butler
Albanese defends scrapping of cashless debit card
Back on Anthony Albanese’s tour around the dial on regional Western Australian radio, the prime minister has again defended his government’s decision to scrap the cashless debit card in favour of a new “smart card” for welfare recipients.
On ABC Goldfields (an interview recorded last night but broadcast this morning), Albanese said that fixing issues with alcohol and crime in regional WA was “about creating opportunity for people, overcoming educational disadvantage”.
Goldfields was one of a handful of sites that hosted cashless debit card programs, an income management tool that quarantined large amounts of a person’s income, until it was abolished by the government last year.
It comes down to an intergenerational issue and you don’t solve that with a media grab, you solve that with hard work and listening and being prepared to act.
The PM said the new program was an improvement on the old CDC, saying it had more scope for transitioning people off income management on to other social programs. The government has come under criticism from some local services in those regions for winding up the card, with claims the ceasing of the program has led to increased crime and alcohol abuse.
Albanese said of the CDC:
It did quarantine income but it took away, like a lot of the NT intervention, took away power from people.
The smart card will not only quarantine some income but provide for some services and ongoing support.”
He noted the government’s injection of $13m into Goldfields services and $17m into economic development in the Kimberley.
We’re not saying we’re going to leave people just on welfare and not give them hope of a better future, employment and training and things that lift people out of despair and poverty.
We’re working through those issues, with the state government, we’ll work with the local government.
RBA didn’t consider a pause in rate hikes at its February meeting
Peter Hannam
The Reserve Bank’s minutes from its 7 February rates meeting have just landed.
As you’ll recall, the RBA board lifted its cash rate at the meeting by 25 basis points to 3.35% and notably warned that it expected more rate rises in coming months.
Well, we get a sense of the bank’s anxiety that inflation wasn’t sufficiently contained more by what they didn’t consider than what they did. Unlike in the previous meeting in December, the board did not consider pausing its rate rises and instead only discussed whether to lift by 25 or 50bp.
(Mind you, there was only one paragraph devoted to a possible pause back in that December gathering.)
Anyway, as per previous refrains, the board members concluded that “inflation in Australia remained too high and that the incoming data on prices and labour costs had tended to exceed expectations”.
Among those concerns was that “private sector wages growth had been stronger than expected in the September quarter and a stronger outcome than previously forecast was expected for the December quarter”.
This was supported by information from liaison contacts, with around one-third of private sector firms reporting wage increases above 5%. Growth in the wage price index was expected to rise to 4.25% by late 2023, before easing to around 3.75% by mid-2025 as conditions in the labour market ease.
Members noted the high degree of uncertainty around this forecast.
This point is interesting and will be tested very soon. Tomorrow we’ll get the WPI numbers for December and we’ll see whether the expectations are beaten. (Market consensus is for a 3.5% annualised rise, up from 3.1% in the September quarter. The CPI was 7.8% and 7.3%, respectively, in those two quarters.)
As for the prospect of a 50bp rise, the board weighed the risk that “the longer inflation stayed high, the greater the risk of price and wage expectations moving higher”.
In the end, as we know, they settled for a 25bp rise, the fourth in a row of such size. Inflation was expected to have just passed its peak, and the outlook was for a softening in consumption growth and that there were many uncertainties around the outlook, the board member said.
With interest rates already having been adjusted substantially, there was less need to move by 50 basis points at this meeting.
The rise is so far 325 basis points and investors are pencilling in another 75 to come.
Caitlin Cassidy
Government requests public feedback on Covid impacts on students with disability
The federal government is urging the public to provide feedback on the impact of Covid-19 on school students with a disability as part of its broader review into the sector.
The public consultation phase of the review – an election commitment – opened on 31 January and will remain open until 28 March.
The minister for education, Jason Clare, said the pandemic disrupted schooling for students all around Australia and has had significant impacts for students with disability:
The pandemic made it more difficult for students with disability to get reasonable adjustments and support, disrupted social connections with their peers, and hindered communication between teachers, students and parents.
We committed to undertake this review so we could learn more about the impacts for students with disability and determine the best way to support them and get their learning back on track.
The minister for social services, Amanda Rishworth, said the review would be an “important piece of work” to understand how to improve outcomes for the 4.4 million Australians living with a disability.
A commonwealth early years strategy is expected to be released later this year. The review will also examine how students with a disability could be better supported in future emergency events.
It follows the releaser of a report by the productivity commission which found there had been little improvement in educational outcomes since the National School Reform Agreement (NSRA) was established, with targets “too incomplete and vague” to drive reforms.
Importantly, it noted data gaps in a range of areas, including no outcome data for students with a disability and no real definition of “educational disadvantage”.
BoM issues storm warnings over eastern states
The Bureau of Meteorology has issued a couple of severe storm warnings for Queensland, NSW and the ACT.
The bureau is predicting storms for Sydney and the Central Coast which could bring flash flooding from late this afternoon, warning damaging winds and large hail are also possible in central and southern parts of the state.
Severe thunderstorms are predicted for Canberra as well as the southern Tablelands and south-west slopes, with large hail and heavy falls also possible.
In Queensland, thunderstorms are also predicted across the state, with storms in the Channel Country and Birdsville set to become severe.
PM confirms voice referendum will be held between October and December
Josh Butler
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has confirmed the voice to parliament referendum will be held between October and December, further narrowing down the window for the first referendum in 24 years. The latest detail points toward an early October voting day.
Albanese also said the referendum would be an even more powerful advance in Indigenous reconciliation efforts than Kevin Rudd’s apology to the stolen generation.
The PM is doing a quick tour of regional Western Australian radio as his cabinet meets in Port Hedland today. After a couple of interviews on ABC Goldfields and Triple M Port Hedland already, Albanese will shortly jump on Triple M Goldfields as well.
On Triple M Port Hedland, Albanese said the referendum would be held “sometime between late September and December”. He later narrowed the window further, saying it wouldn’t be held on AFL grand final day (the last Saturday in September) and would actually be between October and December.
The parliamentary sitting calendar has a four-week break between mid-September and mid-October, while the rest of the year is fairly packed with at least one house of parliament in session for 6 of the next 8 weeks – making it tricky to schedule a national vote in between. The October-December window confirmed by Albanese might make an early October vote more feasible.
Albanese told MMM that the referendum would “lift up our entire nation” and be “a huge opportunity for us to embrace reconciliation”, which he likened to Rudd’s apology in 2007.
In the leadup to the apology, it was resisted by the former Howard government, they said ‘it’ll lead to reparations’.
The truth is, it’s an important day in bringing the nation together … This will be the same, it’ll be even more powerful, not a statement in the parliament but a statement from the people.
Asked a final question about chivalry and whether he opens doors for his partner, Jodie Haydon, (presumably furthering an earlier discussion topic on the radio station) Albanese answered “I don’t even get to open my own door … I have minders wherever I go”.
“I don’t get to open a door any more, it’s a true story,” he said, before adding “politeness and manners are always a good thing”.
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