It is fair to say, before I moved to the country nearly 30 years ago, I had a lot of fun with rural arguments against daylight saving. The most infamous of them all was that of Flo Bjelke-Petersen, the former senator, wife of former Queensland premier Joh and maker of pumpkin scones. She argued that the curtains would fade and milking cows would get confused.
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Amber Haigh said she was tied up by the man accused of her murder and questioned by him during sex, after he claimed to have video of her having sex with her third cousin, a court has heard.
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A witness thought to be one of the last people to see Amber Haigh has admitted that he may have estimated the date he saw her after watching a news item on her disappearance, a court has heard.
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It is now a matter of film legend that the Mad Max movie franchise was inspired by long flat Australian country roads where speed limits are theoretical and carnage is regular. Director George Miller grew up in Chinchilla in Queensland, west of the Darling Downs. He remembers a place of loamy soil, heat haze and burnt land, with a very intense car culture.
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Amber Haigh was having trouble walking when she was put in the “cargo” section of a two-door car to meet an ambulance, a court has heard.
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Tongue twisters were a staple in my childhood home. Fox in Socks by Dr Seuss was a favourite. My grandmother taught us “she sells seashells by the seashore” and “around the rugged rocks the ragged rascal ran”.
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“Urban narcissism” was not a term I had heard before.
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Here’s the thing about the Coalition’s latest nuclear policy. It tries to use one of the most contentious issues in rural areas, which is the rollout of renewables and the electricity transmission lines to carry energy around the country, to push an even more controversial energy transition.
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One of the great contrasts that has struck me on city visits is the rise of dog culture.
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People often dream of small town life. It’s the idea of belonging, I think. My local supermarket, my post office, my bank and my chemist are in the same block. My newsagent is also my cafe. Every time I go to town, people can see where I go and who I meet. Life is conducted in a goldfish bowl.
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If the last thing you remember about Australian dairy farmers is the $1 milk price war, it is worth thinking a little more deeply about the white in your flat white and what it signifies for food producers.
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One of my enduring memories as a mother with a 12-month-old infant was covering the 1998 constitutional convention at Old Parliament House in Canberra.
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Fig season is upon us so I spend the golden hour shooing the cockatoos away from the delicate purple fruit ripening in the hot autumn sun.
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Sometimes, you just have to follow the money. Such as this past weekend, when my inbox pinged with emails celebrating International Women’s Day. Social media was awash with images of women in agriculture, astride headers, mustering or standing in crops and generally exuding authority.
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There is an interesting juxtaposition happening in the Australian food supply chain. On the one side you have farmers who compete for a slot in the market. And on the other you have the supermarket duopoly, who, according to a report by the former watchdog Allan Fels, face no real competition at all.
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I recently discovered the chest freezer in our shearer’s huts had blown up in a lightning strike. The power had been out for two weeks. It felt like a CSI plot: I’m the woman with the torch, pushing the creaky shed door open to find a cloud of blowflies hovering around a bad smell.
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Relations between the Albanese government and the National Farmers Federation (NFF) have deteriorated after the lobby group began a public media campaign against so-called “anti-farming policies”.
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It has become a standard of bush politics, led largely by the National party, that city “latte sippers” don’t understand country people.
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One of the saddest comments since Saturday’s referendum was from the Wangkangurru elder Don Rowlands from near Birdsville in the Queensland electorate of Maranoa, where 85% voted no.
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Drier conditions combined with lower commodity prices and smaller crops are expected to reduce broadacre farm incomes by 41% on average this financial year, according to the latest Australian agricultural seasonal outlook.
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We all know that, occasionally, trains can run late. But last week my $120 train ticket ended up costing NSW TrainLink $2,096.32 because the train left half an hour early.
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Last year was a pretty good year for Melinee Leather and her husband, Robert. Their business, the Leather Cattle Company, breeds cattle for the European market on three farms stretching over 17,000 hectares near Rockhampton in Queensland.
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The Productivity Commission has recommended a major overhaul of the Coalition’s $5bn Future Drought Fund to focus on programs that have a “lasting public benefit” even if that means fewer funding announcements.
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Having spent most of my career trying to understand rural culture, I think it’s fair to say the bush’s image of itself is egalitarian. Rural people say they identify with battlers and underdogs.
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Australian agricultural exports have grown by $12.5bn to $80bn due to higher-than-average rainfall and high commodity prices, a new report has found.
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When you move to a country town, it takes a while to learn where the power lies.
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The world could fall short of food by 2050 due to falling crop yields, insufficient investment in agricultural research and trade shocks, according to Joe Biden’s special envoy for food security, Dr Cary Fowler.
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This week we are expecting representatives of a solar energy company to come to our farm in southern New South Wales. They want to build next door.
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The Albanese government will face a tougher time buying back water to fulfil the Murray-Darling Basin plan due to increased corporatisation, fewer water holders and a socioeconomic impact test that cannot be met, experts have warned.
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Irrigators and environmental groups have raised concerns about a proposal for a massive almond farm in South Australia which could draw up to 30 gigalitres of water from the Murray-Darling Basin each year.
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At 4am, when I am fending off my evil night-time voice, I have begun to step through the process of making sourdough.
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The Murray-Darling Basin Authority has written to PricewaterhouseCoopers seeking assurances that confidential information contained in audit and river modelling contracts worth more than $28m has not been shared.
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Spoiler alert: this column contains details from Succession season four. Don’t read on unless you’ve watched the finale, episode 10.
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Murray Watt says a hiring freeze made the public service reliant on external consultants such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, which reportedly led to the company making an unsolicited bid for work based on information from internal meetings.
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PricewaterhouseCoopers was warned for using confidential information gleaned from meetings with senior executives at the agriculture department to make unsolicited proposals for more work.
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For farmers, growing food and fibre is no longer enough in an age of global heating.
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Behind a eucalypt curtain in the south-eastern forest on the Victorian-New South Wales border, the son of an old colonial family is reflecting on the privilege of his inheritance.
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Depending on your point of view, Waltzing Matilda should be either the national anthem or declared Australia’s creepiest song.
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The public service comedy Utopia has a lot to answer for when it comes to sullying the name of “nation-building” rail projects, after it devoted an episode to the perennial political story of high-speed rail.
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Communities along the inland rail have welcomed Dr Kerry Schott’s damning review into the National party’s key infrastructure project, saying they have felt dismissed for years over concerns around the route selection, traffic disruption and noise.
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Just four years ago, Tim Fischer called on the National party to put One Nation last on its how-to-vote cards.
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It is passing strange that rural seats are likely to be crucial to the outcome of the New South Wales election, yet there has been little attention paid to what is happening west of Penrith.
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Former defence department secretary Dennis Richardson has described the decision to house Australia’s strategic fuel reserves in the US as “an absolute joke”.
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It is a truth universally acknowledged that we rarely talk about drought when we are not in drought. You could loosely call it the “hydro-illogical cycle”.
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After two wet years, you can jump in a channel on Garry and Leanne Hall’s property on the edge of the Macquarie Marshes in northwestern New South Wales and quickly find yourself surrounded by wildlife.
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It feels like a genteel country garden party. The women prepare platters of food, tea and coffee. A marquee filled with chairs stands outside. It is the home of farmer Kate Gunn, looking out over Liverpool Plains, which is a mosaic of rich chocolate brown soil, crop stubble and grassland.
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City-based teal independents have crossed the great dividing range to support Pilliga and Liverpool Plains farmers and traditional owners fighting a Santos coal seam gas project and the accompanying Hunter gas pipeline.
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Drive into any country town and you will see the remnants of old bank buildings. They have often been turned into smart cafes, serving flat whites and specialty teas to locals and passersby alike.
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Two weeks ago, farmers in northern New South Wales turned up on a Sunday to blockade Santos from conducting seismic testing for gas next to prime agricultural country on the highly fertile land of the Liverpool Plains.
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Families are full of random useless advice and mine especially so.
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Ben and Emma Laird have been isolated by flood waters on the family’s farm north-west of Hillston for two months. He estimates between two-thirds and three-quarters of the 30,000ha place in western NSW is inundated.
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As the Nationals revealed its opposition to an Indigenous voice to parliament this week, the Victorian Women’s Trust were putting the finishing touches on its model of kitchen table conversations as a national campaign tool ahead of the voice referendum.
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David Pocock doesn’t mince words. The independent senator for the ACT tackles issues head-on, whether he is playing a Test match or chaining himself to a digger in solidarity with farmers against the Whitehaven coalmine.
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For the past couple of weeks, planes have been spraying some canola crops around us with fungicide. We rely on tank water that is collected from the roofs of our house and sheds.
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Some Australian rural communities suffer worse internet access than some “poor villages” in Africa, which is impeding decarbonisation and efficient production in regional Australia, the economist Ross Garnaut has said.
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At first sight, Denizen looks like another rural noir. Some bookshops place its red dirt cover in crime. Others in literary fiction. Some have called it a gothic thriller. It doesn’t really matter where it goes, such is the arresting nature of its content.
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In 2001, the UK was transfixed by grim daily news as government authorities tried to shut down an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.
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You may have missed the quiet war waged by farmer groups to end foot in mouth disease.
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Peak Hill, Australia is a long way from Wellington in Somerset in the south-west of England. Further still to Doncaster in the UK. But that is the journey made by a pink Matchbox Ford Capri, originally bought by a little boy a long time ago.
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The Albanese government has a chance to break down the misconceptions between the Labor party and rural Australia, according to new agriculture minister, Murray Watt, who flagged the climate crisis as a key area in which to work towards common ground.
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David Littleproud has been chosen as the next leader of the Nationals.
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Nationals MP Darren Chester has confirmed he will run for the party’s leadership in a ballot next week, setting up an explosive showdown with his rival Barnaby Joyce - a man Chester once described as “incoherent”.
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An editorial in the Weekly Times has delivered a rare sharp rebuke to Barnaby Joyce post-election, urging him and the National party to concede climate change is real and will affect all parts of the country, not just “leafy suburbs” in the city.
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As the Liberal party started its self-examination, Barnaby Joyce was busy putting lipstick on a pig, talking up the National party’s stellar result on the weekend.
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I once stayed in a city pub where the roof opened up as the obligatory afternoon Sydney storm rolled through. We scrambled to move our suitcase out of the torrent of water and went downstairs to see the manager.
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It started with a sniff. And a sneeze. In a post-pandemic world, public sniffles are difficult at the best of times.
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Former Nationals party leader Michael McCormack has not ruled out another leadership tilt and said his priority is delivering tangible outcomes for regional Australia, not getting a spot on Sky News, in an apparent dig at his successor, Barnaby Joyce.
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The first thing Mooroopna local Betul Tuna wants in a politician is honesty. A close second would be “a human”.
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The Goyder Line marks the line of reliable rainfall in South Australia. The Brisbane Line marks the apocryphal plan to abandon northern Australia during the second world war. The Barnaby Line, then, could mark the boundary of Barnaby Joyce’s appeal to rural voters.
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A Coalition water war has erupted in the Victorian rural seat of Nicholls, with a Liberal candidate accusing the Nationals of “just reading from the talking points” on water policy.
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Former independent Tony Windsor and inland rail advocate Everald Compton have backed five independent candidates in regional electorates in a bid to change political representation on or near the proposed inland rail route.
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The former chief of the defence force Chris Barrie says defence personnel are not allowed to speak out on the national strategic threats posed by climate change without prior approval from Peter Dutton’s office.
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Australia’s busiest highway, the Pacific Highway, has been cut off by flood waters from the record-breaking rainfall in south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales, leaving hundreds of trucks stranded and supermarket supply chains ruptured.
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Barnaby Joyce has backed Narrabri’s mayor and general manager after they overturned the council’s opposition to the inland rail route on the grounds of flood risk, without consulting their own councillors.
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The inland rail is a political dream that winds back into pre-federation days. The first version was laid out by Henry Parkes in his Tenterfield address of 1889, as he made the case for a national government.
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Australia’s national fuel supply could be disrupted due to a shortage of the diesel exhaust additive AdBlue, a defence expert has warned.
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As you consider your Christmas table – a bowl of cherries, a plump roasted bird and the cream on your pudding, you may spare a thought for the way the food gets to your table.
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See link for more details...
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Farmer groups have split over the Coalition’s rejection of Joe Biden’s global methane pledge, with the National Farmers Federation backing the government’s stance while Farmers for Climate Action has urged Australia to commit to cut methane.
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The housing crisis and mental health crisis are converging in regional Australia as rental vacancy rates in some regions fall below 1% with city people on the move, rentals converting to Airbnbs or owners cashing in on high property prices.
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An Australian farmer-owned mutual has been established to give landowners greater access to the growing environmental goods and services markets as the world transitions to net zero.
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Constitutional lawyers and environmental groups have warned federal agriculture funding could be open to challenge if it appears to support measures that are inconsistent with international environment agreements.
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Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie has dismissed concerns Coalition seats disproportionately benefited from $300m of regional grants, saying all of the projects funded in the scheme were “valid” and “that’s how it goes”.
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The federal agriculture minister, David Littleproud, has rejected demands from farmers for compensation for emissions reductions agreed more than two decades ago, saying the states should be responsible for compensating farmers over land clearing laws.
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Telstra’s chief executive, Andy Penn, has admitted that mobile speeds of 2 to 10 megabits per second (Mbps) are “typical” for regional areas such as Geraldton, even though the company advertises speeds of 2-50Mbps on its 4G phones.
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Last year Hannah Sparks got a call from her partner, Will Picker, telling her he had had an accident but before he could give her any more details of what had happened or where he was, they lost the phone connection.
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He came to us in exchange for a case of beer. A white sulphur-crested cockatoo of indeterminate age but full of chutzpah. He had lived the childhoods of the neighbouring farm kids and now he would entertain us.
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A Liberal-aligned thinktank has recommended 5% of state coal royalties be set aside annually along with $20m in federal funding to establish “coal adaption authorities” and worker income insurance to help rejuvenate regional Australia.
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Fifteen years ago I took a job at our local newspaper in my southern New South Wales town of 2,000 people.
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Strip away modernity. Unlearn everything you know about the complexity of your average day. The ordinary interaction, the workaday worries, the pinging of your phone, the relentless roll of the inbox. You are left with the human condition. Our most basic needs, as the American psychologist Abraham Maslow noted, are the physiological needs: food and water, sufficient rest, clothing, shelter, health and reproduction.
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Barnaby is back. The Nationals have delivered leadership into the hands of a political terrorist and his allies, thereby throwing tacks under the tyres of rural communities. Slow clap for them.
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If Australia is known for anything in the farming world, it is the ability to produce food from a brittle environment. We have built many of our national myths and legends around our capacity to produce primarily wheat, sheep, beef and dairy amid bushfires, drought and flood. We also have a healthy food export infrastructure, and are fond of saying we feed twice as many people abroad than we do at home.
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The timing was exquisite. Just as many Australian farmers had mostly finished sowing, Beijing’s 80% tariff imposed on our second biggest crop – barley – hit like a tonne of bricks.
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It’s odd, this coronavirus, viewed from a small rural town. The wall-to-wall news coverage that bookmarks all our days is contrary to the rhythm of our lives.
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Michael McCormack has won. For the time being. But Barnaby Joyce is nothing if not an opportunist. Like a rat up a drainpipe, he will watch for the next opening.
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I’m starting to think that after living on a farm for 25 years, I might now learn the art of agriculture at the age of 54. I’m starting to think, in the hierarchy of needs, it might matter more to me than journalism. Because of, well, food. As a journalist for 30-plus years, that is a hard truth. But food matters. Where food comes from matters. The landscape that provides our food matters.
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There might be a place where “raving inner city lunatics” are the only people who are concerned about climate change but it is certainly not Michael McCormack’s electorate of Riverina.
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Tim Watts is the product of six generations of graziers, Anzacs and pilots who could have come from the pages of Russel Ward’s The Australian Legend, the 1950s book that distilled the mythical characteristics of the early white nation.
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The last election may have left the impression with voters that farmers and rural people in general do not accept climate science because there was no seismic shift of seats.
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It was passing strange that the last seat to be declared in the 2019 federal election was the Victorian seat Mallee, one of the safest held by the National party.
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It was one of the election surprises that Barnaby Joyce not only kept his seat but also increased his margin on 2016 after an unprecedented term of personal and professional turmoil.
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Contemptible. Stupid. Dipshits. Morons. Fools and worse.
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Derryn Hinch, Fraser Anning, Brian Burston and the Liberal Democrats senator, Duncan Spender, have all lost their Senate seats but One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts is still in with a chance in Queensland.
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Nationals have rallied around leader Michael McCormack after the party appears to have retained all its seats, including Cowper where it was under pressure from Rob Oakeshott.
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Conventional wisdom going into the election was that Labor would win, so Saturday’s result had people scratching their heads about the opinion polls.
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The Coalition has successfully fought off challenges from centrist independents in rural areas, including Farrer, Cowper and New England.
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See link for more details...
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The T-shirts said “it’s time” but the energy in the room followed up with a question mark. Could it really be this time?
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Jim Molan’s battle to win back a New South Wales Senate position has started a war between the Liberal and the National parties that could jeopardise the Coalition agreement and the Nationals’ only potential NSW Senate seat.
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By his own account, Ron Ismay has been a National party member for an awfully long time.
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Labor has released its costings, showing a bigger budget surplus every year and culminating in a $21.7bn surplus by 2022-23, as a result of changes to the “two-class tax system”.
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One of the more mysterious stories hiding in plain sight this election is the curious link between the Armidale Club and the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority.
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The water minister, David Littleproud, says he would be open to working with the basin states to discuss breaking up the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) between an agency and a regulator, as recommended by the Productivity Commission.
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The day began and ended with Liberal and Labor candidates stepping down over social media posts, sucking the oxygen out of the Coalition’s environment policy in the Melbourne seat of Kooyong.
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Every campaign will have exploding candidates but this year has been particularly spectacular.
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It could not have been more clear when Scott Morrison laid out his philosophy, “a fair go for those who have a go”.
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Two years ago Craig Gallpen and his partner, Rachael Napier, were enjoying their life, milking 500 cows with 10 or 11 staff. Now they employ one person, with 200 cows. Their wage bill has dropped from $450,000 to $50,000.
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See link for more details...
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In 2013, Tony Abbott launched the mother of all scare campaigns over Labor’s carbon price, so it is worth watching where climate change policies land with voters this time around.
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The federal government has committed to buy back “A class” water licenses issued under the controversial Barwon Darling water sharing plan, after an independent report into the fish kills recommended a major refinement of basin management.
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Malcolm Turnbull has called on Scott Morrison to “deal with” Peter Dutton after allegations that the immigration minister met the former Australian resident billionaire Huang Xiangmo after he paid $10,000 to a lobbyist.
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Water politics is about to go into hyperdrive in rural Australia and you need to know why.
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Labor has warned the government against making any major decisions on the Adani coalmine before the election, while Scott Morrison and his environment minister Melissa Price face internal pressure from some Queensland MPs to take action.
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People in regional Australia and older people would get the least benefits from the Coalition’s tax cuts to 2024-25 while middle- to high-income couples with children in inner-city electorates fare the best.
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Fraser Anning has been censured and condemned roundly by the Senate for his comments on the Christchurch massacre, with only One Nation not supporting the censure.
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The Coalition has made a $100bn spend on infrastructure for roads and rail the centrepiece of its pre-election budget.
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In dissecting the New South Wales election, the recently retired Liberal minister Pru Goward described the desertion of conservative Coalition voters in her own country seat of Goulburn.
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It was Paul Keating who once called the former Nationals leader Ian Sinclair a political carcass in a coat and tie, but let’s get this straight from the outset: the oft-predicted death of the National party is not imminent.
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The state seat of Barwon is about as rusted-on as you can get.
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Prominent rural women expressed their anger at a potential return of Barnaby Joyce to the Nationals leadership, with one accusing the party of turning a blind eye to his past behaviour in order to raise funds and votes in some quarters.
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As a child, Tania Magoci spent every weekend at Lake Wyangan near Griffith, waterskiing, swimming and boating with her family.
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You may have noticed that Scott Morrison has started talking about climate – he has rebadged and refunded Tony Abbott’s Direct Action emissions reduction fund and Malcolm Turnbull’s Snowy Hydro 2.0.
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The Helloworld chief executive, Andrew Burnes, has denied allegations he told a former employee he was able to organise a meeting with Australia’s ambassador to the US, Joe Hockey, quickly because “Hockey owes me”.
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Scott Morrison has denied reports the US ambassador Joe Hockey instructed staff to meet with Helloworld subsidiary QBT before it lobbied for government work.
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“James Ashby is the brains behind the One Nation operation.” That was the nicest thing any senator could say about Ashby on the day he was sent packing from the nation’s parliament by the Senate president, Scott Ryan.
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A Labor government would set up a permanent policy-making body called the Australian Health Reform Commission to address challenges such as chronic disease, cost barriers, long hospital waiting times and workforce shortages.
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The Perfect Storm is the true story of a fishing boat, the Andrea Gail, that headed out for tuna off Massachusetts and was hit by a violent natural event caused by the combination of two massive weather fronts.
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The deputy mayor of Mildura, Jason Modica, will become the second independent candidate to challenge the National party in the seat of Mallee – running on the issues of water, climate change and people power.
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A quiet change to Shenhua’s New South Wales planning conditions for its open-cut Watermark coalmine could desecrate sites of Indigenous cultural significance before the federal environment minister decides whether they should be protected.
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A New South Wales Liberal branch president has declared war on the National party in the heart of Michael McCormack’s own seat, organising with Anyone But Nats to help defeat the Coalition partner at the NSW election.
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A portrait of the Queen still hangs in most country halls so it seems fitting to use one of her most memorable phrases. For the Nationals, 2018 has been an annus horribilis.
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It may seem an impossible notion on a margin of 19.8%, but the scandal that has forced Andrew Broad to step aside from the ministry and retire at the next election means one of the National party’s safest seats is in play.
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A third-party organisation trying to unseat New South Wales National party MPs is under investigation by the state’s electoral commission – a move that has spurred its organisers to target federal Nationals seats, specifically Barnaby Joyce’s seat of New England.
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The next election could shape up as an important contest for centrist voters who consider climate and environmental concerns as a test of leadership according to leading social researcher Rebecca Huntley.
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It was about the time Scott Morrison was moving to save the Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly’s preselection that a bipartisan barbecue began in Parliament House to mark a far less-reported story.
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The behaviour of parliamentarians and their staff would be governed by a code of conduct and an independent parliamentary standards commissioner who could refer individuals to a national integrity commission under laws proposed by the crossbench.
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Voices 4 Indi, the community group that launched Cathy McGowan’s political career, has called for expressions of interest for a new candidate for the seat, fuelling speculation that the key crossbencher could step down at the next election.
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Federal crossbenchers will introduce a bill within weeks for a national integrity commission, with wide-ranging powers covering politicians, agencies, lobbyists and private contractors when they are directly dealing with government, such as the NDIS.
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Alex Turnbull has committed to fund independent, locally based “small-L liberal” candidates who advocate action on climate change and can play a constructive role in the parliament.
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The journalist and activist Anne Coombs may take on the energy minister, Angus Taylor, at the next election, joining a growing movement of largely women independents seeking to dislodge rural and regional Coalition MPs.
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The Western Australian National party has come out in force to back Catherine Marriott as she described some of her “lowest moments” since she made sexual harassment allegations against Barnaby Joyce.
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National Farmers Federation president Fiona Simson has been urged to run as an independent against Barnaby Joyce, most recently during a rural womens event in Canberra earlier this month.
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Prominent rural advocates have become increasingly vocal over a potential return of Barnaby Joyce to the National party leadership as the prospect of a concerted independent push in rural areas gains momentum after the Wentworth byelection.
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From the red soil of his hometown in the Western Australian outback town of Wiluna, Michael Jeffery very nearly became a farmer.
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Barnaby Joyce says he would take the National party leadership if it was offered to him but has has rejected suggestions he is “collecting the numbers” against his leader Michael McCormack.
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At first the days are fine but slowly the dry expands and then hollows out. A realisation creeps up and niggles. Is this it? There is an optimism from knowing it will rain again, while banishing the seed of doubt about when.
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A group of Tony Abbott’s constituents have formed Voices of Warringah – based on the successful Voices for Indi, the community group that tipped out former Liberal frontbencher Sophie Mirabella.
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Central to the Australian meaning of drought is the idea of a rainfall deficiency, a term that suggests less than “normal”. But what is normal and how should it govern drought policy? In this part of our series The New Normal, we look at the history of drought policy and how the conversation is changing.
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If you don’t fully appreciate the complexity of rural communities, farmer Peter Schmidt is not the sort of bloke you would be expecting in the Mulga Lands. His place is 21,000 hectares – 52,000 acres in the old money – and his family have been there since his grandfather selected blocks in the 1890s. The closest town is Wyandra, a blip on the highway on the way to Cunnamulla from Charleville – a drive that reveals the disused fences of smaller blocks long abandoned as unsustainable.
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A former water industry lobbyist preselected by the New South Wales National party to lead its Senate ticket in the next federal election has suggested examining Barnaby Joyce’s proposal to release more water for irrigators.
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Tell us about your book in your own words: This book is about nine strangers who go to a health resort hoping to change their lives. It turns out to be a very different experience to what they imagined.
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Rural advocate Catherine Marriott has spoken out about her allegations of sexual harassment against former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, saying she was “terrified” over what to do about the complaint.
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Rural advocate Catherine Marriott, who lodged a complaint against the former National party leader Barnaby Joyce, will speak publicly against sexual harassment in an event organised by an influential rural network.
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Wagga has turned on the New South Wales Liberal party. On Saturday the Berejiklian government lost a large chunk – nearly 30% – of formerly conservative voters. You might be wondering what the hell just happened.
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Nearly 40km from Augathella (population 450), Doug and Rachelle Cameron load supplements for their cattle. The day is typical for an Australian drought, still and silent as if the landscape has gone to sleep.
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If voters in my town are any guide to future elections, Australia will keep turning over political parties until its people find a team that gets it right, and that is because something is fundamentally broken in the relationship between government and citizens.
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The president of the National Farmers’ Federation, Fiona Simson, has declared that climate change is making drought worse in Australia and says tiptoeing around the subject does not do regional communities any good.
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The former president of the National Farmers’ Federation, Brent Finlay, has accused politicians of “jumping in front of the cameras” while shirking effective policy work on drought and climate change.
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The Turnbull government lost a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives as the culmination of a chaotic and bitterly contested day where it elevated its dual citizenship crisis into a full blown trans-Tasman diplomatic incident.
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Derryn Hinch and the Greens are negotiating a move to force all foreign-born senators to show proof of revocation ahead of the referral of three senators to the high court over their dual citizenship.
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Five Liberal MPs released an unprecedented joint statement in support of Dean Smith’s marriage equality bill, attracting overwhelming support from advocates as the Liberal party prepared for a bruising debate in a special party room meeting.
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Water regulations due to be reviewed and updated on 1 September have been postponed for another year by the New South Wales government following the controversy over allegations of water theft in the Barwon-Darling region of the Murray-Darling basin.
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The Liberal senator Dean Smith has released his same-sex marriage bill to his party ahead of Monday’s special meeting, warning his conservative colleagues that a future Labor bill will not protect religious freedoms.
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Dean Smith has evoked Robert Menzies and John Howard in a plea to the Liberal party to allow a conscience vote on same-sex marriage before a special party meeting to discuss the issue on Monday.
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Malcolm Turnbull has said the US-Australia refugee swap was always subject to US security vetting as he defended telling Donald Trump the US could decide not to take any refugees in a leak of their first conversation.
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The New South Wales regional water minister, Niall Blair, has quietly granted himself the power to approve illegal floodplain works retrospectively.
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Peter Dutton has acknowledged members have “strong feelings” on same-sex marriage but urged them to keep comments to the party room as the Coalition government tries to contain the divisive issue.
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Tony Abbott says the Liberal party should take a plebiscite policy to the next federal election, backtracking on his clear statement in 2015 that government MPs should not be bound on same-sex marriage in the next parliament.
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Farmers and water experts say New South Wales government rule changes could be causing more water loss to the Murray-Darling river system than before the national plan was put in place.
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Conservatives have played down unsourced reports that rightwing Liberal MPs would move a spill against Malcolm Turnbull if he allowed government members to cross the floor in support of same-sex marriage.
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Bill Shorten has said he did not know about $400,000 in donations to the Labor party from a tobacco company director and he had called the party administration to “please explain”.
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One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts has attempted to clarify his citizenship status after a spokesman reportedly said he was “choosing to believe he was never British” .
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Barnaby Joyce has told a pub in a Victorian irrigation district that the Four Corners program which raised allegations of water theft was about taking more water from irrigators and shutting down towns.
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Australia’s first female Muslim MP, Mehreen Faruqi, will run for Greens preselection for the Senate in 2019 – setting up a potential challenge to the controversial sitting senator Lee Rhiannon.
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The intergovernmental war over water management has deepened as it has emerged that Barnaby Joyce has nominated an irrigation lobbyist to the board of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA).
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Barnaby Joyce has said allegations of water theft are “overwhelmingly” an issue for New South Wales and anyone who has broken the law will be dealt with.
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The South Australian government, key senators, Indigenous and environmental groups are calling for urgent investigations into allegations that water was being harvested by irrigators in the Barwon-Darling region of the Murray-Darling basin to the detriment of the environment and downstream communities.
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Most Australians support the creation of a new national security ministry, including a slim majority of Labor voters according to the latest Guardian Essential poll.
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Longtime marriage equality campaigner Warren Entsch has poured cold water on Peter Dutton’s call for a voluntary postal plebiscite on same-sex marriage.
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Scott Morrison has rejected the suggestion that inequality is getting worse and attacked Bill Shorten for giving up on economic growth.
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A motion championed by Tony Abbott to introduce one member one preselection voting has passed at the Liberal party’s New South Wales convention.
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The Warringah motion, named for Tony Abbott’s electorate, has won with a strong majority.
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A long-time Liberal member has threatened to tear the party apart and push fellow members to Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives if the Warringah motion for one member-one preselection vote does not succeed this weekend.
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Former Liberal state president Trent Zimmerman has conceded that the NSW party is headed towards changing its rules to allow members a say on preselection of candidates but has urged delegates to compromise on the process.
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It was reminiscent of one of those cheesy $2 mugs: “old prime ministers never retire, they just lose their briefs”.
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Malcolm Turnbull has acknowledged that interest rates are more likely to go up than down, declaring it’s not rocket science that home buyers should be prudent and live within their means.
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Preselection candidate and retired major general Jim Molan has dared the New South Wales Liberal party to expel him by speaking publicly to broadcaster Alan Jones.
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A co-author of a review into Australia’s intelligence agencies, Michael L’Estrange, has backed the Turnbull government’s move to a home affairs portfolio while underlining he did not recommend it as part of his report.
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High-profile members have attacked what they call the current culture of rorts and lobbyists in the New South Wales Liberal party, accusing MPs Alex Hawke and Julian Leeser of trying to protect factions to stop party reform.
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Indigenous Labor MPs have raised doubts about a plan for an Indigenous representative voice to parliament and questioned the Referendum Council’s failure to recommend removing the race powers from the constitution.
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The Liberal party will split unless the looming New South Wales convention on preselection rules allows ordinary members to vote for candidates, former party president candidate John Ruddick has warned.
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Christopher Pyne has committed not to export weapons “willy-nilly” if Australia followed through on his ambition to become a major arms exporter, plans which were attacked as exporting death and profiting from bloodshed.
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Former Greens leader Christine Milne has accused New South Wales senator Lee Rhiannon and her state branch of exercising veto powers over the national party room, and picking and choosing issues to undermine.
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Labor has launched a high court challenge to the right of a National party MP to sit in the parliament, which could remove the Coalition government’s one-seat majority.
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Malcolm Turnbull has clarified Barnaby Joyce’s suggestion that Australia would have sympathy for imposing trade sanctions on China over its relations with North Korea, reiterating that longstanding sanctions are imposed under the United Nations.
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Greens senator Lee Rhiannon has called on her party room to review her expulsion, claiming her leader, Richard Di Natale, and colleagues were well aware of her opposition to the school funding bill.
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Barnaby Joyce has said the government would have “sympathy” with US trade sanctions against China for “aiding and abetting” North Korea.
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It is a fact that Canberra has its fair share of honey-tongued politicians but parliament is about to produce its very own product.
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Tony Abbott has rejected National party calls to stop creating division, describing Malcolm Turnbull’s government as at a low ebb and denying that he wants the prime minister’s job again.
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Kevin Rudd has warned that the world is entering a dangerous new phase with North Korea’s missile test potentially sparking US military action.
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National party senator John Williams has warned the Liberal party that a plebiscite on marriage equality is part of the Coalition agreement, signed by Malcolm Turnbull and Barnaby Joyce.
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Julia Gillard has weighed into Donald Trump’s odd Twitter behaviour, acknowledging there will be questions about his mental health.
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The latest Guardian Essential poll has found nearly half of voters (43%) think Tony Abbott should resign from the parliament as the former prime minister continues to cause ongoing instability in the Coalition.
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Penny Wong has said a New South Wales Labor conference motion that urges the next Labor government to recognise Palestine would not determine Labor’s federal position.
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Greens senators have come out to defend the leadership of Richard Di Natale after the New South Wales senator Lee Rhiannon used a television interview on Sunday to express her disappointment in the party leader.
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Malcolm Turnbull has committed to run as prime minister in a 2019 election, two days after he said he would leave parliament if he lost the prime ministership.
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Peter Dutton has urged the Coalition to move on from Christopher Pyne’s boastful comments claiming victory for the moderates and he assured conservatives that he was a “leader in the government”.
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The New South Wales senator Lee Rhiannon and her party organisation Greens NSW have described the Australian Greens MPs’ decision to exclude her from their party room as unconstitutional.
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In an unprecedented move, the New South Wales Greens senator Lee Rhiannon has been excluded from her party room on “contentious government legislation” until the Greens NSW end the practice of binding its MPs to a vote.
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The Australian Greens party room has voted to temporarily suspend New South Wales senator Lee Rhiannon.
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Malcolm Turnbull got his leather jacket out for his visit to the southern New South Wales town of Cooma for a briefing on Snowy Hydro 2.0.
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Bill Shorten has pledged to legislate to restore existing Sunday penalty rates following cuts of between 25% and 50%, due to come into effect on 1 July.
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Lee Rhiannon has doubled down on her opposition to Gonski 2.0 school funding, describing it as a “con job” and accusing unnamed people of a vicious attempt to destroy her reputation.
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An overwhelming majority of voters support real-time reporting of political donations and disclosure of politicians’ meetings with companies, unions and donors, according to the Guardian Essential poll.
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At Sydney casino’s Cherry Bar, so the marketing goes, you can move to house, disco, balearic beats and lounge DJ mixes. “Be all you want to be.”
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The Greens party elder Bob Brown has described a formal complaint against Lee Rhiannon, signed by her nine party colleagues, as unprecedented but “warranted”.
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The New South Wales Greens senator Lee Rhiannon could face censure or expulsion from the party room after a signed complaint letter from all her colleagues accused her of potentially damaging conduct in the schools debate.
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Tanya Plibersek has promised Labor will restore every dollar that has been cut from Catholic and public schools, adding an extra $17bn into the education system on top of the Turnbull government’s newly passed $23bn Gonski 2.0 funding package.
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The most ridiculous thing about the school funding bill that became law just before 2am on Friday morning is the fact that most of the parliament agree on the basic principle at its heart.
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Australia’s deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, has likened Brexit to a divorce in which he has promised to keep talking to both sides, on the eve of a trade visit to the UK and the European Union.
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Treasury officials have admitted their bank levy costings assume some of the $6.2bn bank levy will passed through to customers.
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Josh Frydenberg says it is too soon to say if the Coalition party room will support a clean energy target after a three-hour extraordinary meeting in which a number of government colleagues raised concerns about the core recommendations of the Finkel review.
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The crossbench senator Nick Xenophon has labelled the ministerial code of conduct meaningless after revelations that the former trade minister Andrew Robb took up a highly paid consultancy as he left office at the 2016 election.
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Barnaby Joyce has called on former trade minister Andrew Robb to answer questions on his role with Landbridge – leasee of the Darwin port – as former top US intelligence chief James Clapper urged Australia to be vigilant on foreign control of critical infrastructure.
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The special minister of state, Scott Ryan, has defended former trade minister Andrew Robb who took a contract with Chinese-owned Landbridge, a day before he left office, saying politicians need to work after parliament.
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Cory Bernardi was warned by a senior Liberal that his criticism of Labor senator Sam Dastyari’s donations from Chinese government linked individuals might affect the Liberal party, given “we receive money from them too”.
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The Labor senator Sam Dastyari contradicted Labor party policy on the South China Sea a day after influential Chinese billionaire Huang Xiangmo threatened to withdraw a promised $400,000 donation to the party, Four Corners has alleged.
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There are “very real concerns” about two more Australian who may have been caught up in the London Bridge terrorism attack, prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has said.
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Malcolm Turnbull has been briefed by counter-terrorism experts and offered condolences to the UK after an attack in London, which killed seven people and injured at least 48, as Pauline Hanson was criticised for her response.
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The Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, has outlined his demands for support of the Turnbull government’s schools package, including more money and an independent body to stop the ongoing education funding wars.
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The Coalition government has recommitted to Australia’s emissions targets in the Paris agreement after Donald Trump’s withdrawal but Malcolm Turnbull faces internal division as conservative MPs celebrated the American decision.
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Up to 130 spills of toxic waste could occur if the Santos Narrabri coal seam gas project goes ahead, potentially endangering high-quality drinking and irrigation water, according to a leading academic.
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Malcolm Turnbull says Australia will continue to share its intelligence with the United States in the wake of its rift with the UK over a series of leaks over the Manchester bombing.
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Country towns are, by their nature, conservative. Change happens slowly and traditions are not discarded easily.
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Anthony Albanese has differentiated himself from Bill Shorten on the budget, saying the Coalition had raised the “ideological white flag” as he urged Labor to claim a win for progressive politics and move on.
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The National party has used the bank levy to try to build a fundraising war chest in anticipation of a mining tax-style political campaign from the major banks.
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Australia’s biggest banks will be forced to regularly open their books for the competition regulator to reveal how they set their mortgage interest rates against the Reserve Bank cash rate.
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The bank lobby has attacked the Turnbull government for forcing senior major bank executives to sign confidentiality agreements before they are allowed to view the legislation that imposes a planned $6.2bn levy.
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Chris Bowen has described as “reverse protectionism” the Turnbull government’s decision to impose a bank levy on Australia’s big banks without imposing it on major foreign banks.
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Don’t know your levies from your liabilities? Best get across this one because the fight between the Turnbull government and big banks has got a way to go after Labor confirmed it would back a Senate inquiry into the issue.
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A Greens senator has warned the Coalition’s $6.2bn bank levy could raise $1.5bn less than expected over four years, given the cost is tax-deductible.
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The commonwealth has warned Rod Culleton to repay money paid to him when he was a Western Australian One Nation senator.
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Cory Bernardi has said his Australian Conservative party has had a surge of more than 700 new members in the days since the Coalition’s budget, with many of them resigning from the Liberal party.
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Disability groups have warned Labor it would be a shame to create a political fight over the Turnbull government’s plan to increase the Medicare levy to fully fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
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Scott Morrison has acknowledged the big banks will find any way to charge customers and said he accepts responsibility for all the budget measures, including the $6.2bn bank tax.
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The Turnbull government is unlikely to gain Senate support for a hike in the Medicare levy in lower income brackets after the Greens and Nick Xenophon both expressed concerns about its impact.
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The Turnbull government has established a $10bn national rail program, cementing the move towards urban and regional rail in a departure from Tony Abbott’s preference for road projects.
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Refugees will be able to come into Australia for a fee of almost $40,000 under a private sponsorship program for community organisations, individuals and businesses expected to be expanded in next week’s budget.
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Catholic school funding has been redirected away from smaller bush schools towards bigger dioceses in and around Sydney, according to a confidential review by former Gonski panellist Kathryn Greiner.
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Aged parents of migrants will get access to 15,000 five-year temporary visas at $10,000 each under changes expected to be announced in next week’s budget.
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Matt Canavan has praised the $73m Adani deal with the troubled Whyalla steelworks for the Carmichael coal rail line, suggesting the government could look favourably on the company’s $1bn loan application.
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Labor has promised to triple the cost of temporary work visas to ensure employers look locally for workers, while setting up a new visa to ensure Australia will remain a destination for the “best and brightest”.
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Matt Canavan has redoubled his attack on Westpac – accusing the bank of a conflict of interest over financial links to the Newcastle port – as a direct competitor to future coalmines in the Galilee basin.
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The Turnbull government will cut funding from 24 private schools in a 10-year plan designed to bring all schools to the same funding level.
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Mathias Cormann has described the decision by Westpac to place tougher restrictions on lending to new coal projects as strange and disappointing.
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Malcolm Turnbull has warned that North Korea could launch a nuclear attack on its neighbours and said China has not applied enough pressure on the regime.
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New Zealand citizens living in Australia are rallying to block the proposed citizenship rule changes in the Senate after the office of the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, confirmed longer waiting times would also apply to Kiwis.
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Malcolm Turnbull has visited the Australian troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, while Bill Shorten is visiting Papua New Guinea for Anzac day commemorations.
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Warren Entsch has said Malcolm Turnbull is considering a new model for government-underwritten cyclone insurance in north Queensland in the wake of Cyclone Debbie.
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Christopher Pyne has warned colleagues to keep budget discussions behind closed doors while pointing out evidence shows that allowing young people to access superannuation for housing would increase prices.
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Malcolm Turnbull has assured the Indian billionaire hoping to build Australia’s largest coal mine in Queensland, Gautam Adani, that native title issues will not stop the $16bn project.
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Barnaby Joyce has said governments cannot make policies to bring down the price of houses and urged people struggling to enter the expensive Sydney and Melbourne housing markets to move to regional cities like Tamworth.
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Most people think businesses will pocket company tax cuts rather than employ more workers, and more people disapprove of the decision to give $24bn worth of tax cuts to businesses with annual turnover of up to $50m.
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The independent Jacqui Lambie has written to Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, urging them to impose a 10% royalty on all offshore gas projects in commonwealth waters.
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A Senate crossbench majority is in favour of reforming the petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT) because taxpayers are not receiving a fair share of revenue for gas resources – a situation the Labor senator Sam Dastyari has called a “complete fucking rort”.
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Malcolm Turnbull has called on Moscow to pull Bashar al-Assad into line, referring to Syria as a client state of Russia.
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Companies with a turnover of up to $50m will receive a tax cut taking the rate from 30% to 25% after the Turnbull government struck a deal with the Nick Xenophon Team in return for a promised $260m worth of one-off payments for pensioners.
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Tony Abbott has hit out at senior members of his own government over the failed China extradition treaty, saying ministers should spend less time trying to trash critics and get on with governing.
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The Aboriginal Legal Service (Australian Capital Territory/New South Wales) was not allowed to speak to a Senate committee examining the Turnbull government’s bill designed to improve free speech by watering down race hate laws.
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Ethnic and legal groups including the Human Rights Commission, the Law Council of Australia and the Human Rights Law Centre have raised serious concerns over the Coalition’s bill to water down the Racial Discrimination Act.
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The Liberal New South Wales government, major energy users, manufacturers and businesses including BHP Billiton have urged the Finkel review of the electricity market to consider a price on carbon or a market mechanism.
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The Nationals leader, Barnaby Joyce, has called for states to lift the bans on coal seam gas and has urged them to follow South Australia’s plan to pay royalties as compensation to landholders.
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Malcolm Turnbull has used his expansion plans for the Snowy Hydro to try to outdo South Australia on battery storage, saying it would provide 20 times the capacity of the battery system proposed by the premier, Jay Weatherill.
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The nation’s peak business body has joined the growing calls for an emissions intensity scheme (EIS) and argued coal-fired power stations should give three years notice for closure in its submission to the chief scientist’s electricity review.
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Malcolm Turnbull has said the gas industry has guaranteed greater supplies for Australians but warned he would use the commonwealth export powers “in the national interest” if the companies did not deliver.
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The National Farmers’ Federation has welcomed South Australia’s plan to provide royalties to landholders in return for gas development but warned farmers would want to ensure land and water was not compromised.
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The South Australian government’s plan to direct energy market operators on gas supply and intervene with the national regulator during periods of high demand could be in contravention of the national electricity market.
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Most voters support a range of tax increases, including the “Buffett rule” and a minimum rate for multinational companies, while there is limited support for the Turnbull government’s $50bn corporate tax cut, the Guardian Essential poll has found.
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The former federal resources minister Ian Macfarlane has said the majority of 126 mining projects under Indigenous land use agreements could be shut down pending renegotiations following a federal court ruling on native title.
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Malcolm Turnbull has argued the case for budget repair is not just a fiscal imperative but a moral one, echoing Tony Abbott’s argument from a year ago.
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The Australian Energy Market Operator has warned that Australia is facing energy shortages if governments do not carry out national planning as exports continue to dominate the country’s gas supply.
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Australia’s financial institutions could be required to test climate-risk scenarios as international regulators continue to warn of the economic dangers posed by climate change.
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Three of Australia’s big four banks have opposed parliamentary recommendations that senior executives should be automatically named for breaches affecting customers.
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The assistant treasurer, Michael Sukkar, has taken issue with Commonwealth bank chief Ian Narev’s proposition that housing was difficult to afford but not overpriced, saying first home buyers find housing extraordinarily expensive.
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The National party stalwart Ron Boswell has said the industry minister, Arthur Sinodinos, would rue the day that he legitimised Pauline Hanson and warned the Coalition that voters will desert them if they did deals with One Nation.
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The presidency of Donald Trump could mark the breakdown of global trade and the division of the world into trading blocs based around currencies – forcing Australia to choose between the United States and China.
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Australia’s trade minister, Steve Ciobo, has defended tough visa entry requirements for Indonesian students ahead of a high level visit to the country to complete an Australia-Indonesia trade deal.
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The shadow employment minister, Brendan O’Connor, has defended Labor’s decision to step away from the Fair Work Commission’s penalty rate decision as unions meet this week to plan a Work Choices-style campaign against the Coalition and One Nation.
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Pauline Hanson has backed penalty rate cuts, reasserted her respect for Vladimir Putin and described successive governments’ vaccination policies as blackmail.
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Malcolm Turnbull has muscled up his language on national security, declaring Australia’s objective is to kill fighters serving with Islamic State in the Middle East wherever possible.
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The head of the consumer and wealth division of National Australia Bank received a 36% increase in pay after the division overcharged its superannuation customers by $34.7m.
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The manufacturing union has called for governments to hand over land and tax concessions to industry to provide the support to save the sector in the transition from coal.
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The health minister, Greg Hunt, has signalled the government is reviewing the Medicare rebate freeze ahead of the budget in a move that could cost the budget more than $3bn.
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A group of New South Wales farmers fear that the federal and state governments are using the South Australian blackouts to push through a controversial 850-well coal seam gas project in the north-west of the state.
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The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) has approved a $450,000 grant to EnergyAustralia to investigate a pumped hydro energy storage project off South Australia as the state’s energy mix continues to cause a political storm.
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Malcolm Turnbull has hit back at suggestions that his house’s large personal rooftop solar and battery system sends a message contrary to the government’s endorsement of “clean coal”.
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Labor will establish a national Indigenous caucus of federal, state and territory MPs aimed at increasing representation, voter enrolment and party representation among Australia’s first peoples.
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The Coalition has used an ANZ credit card interest rate cut of 2% as evidence that its oversight of the big four banks using a parliamentary committee is working and a royal commission is not needed.
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The Coalition is considering changing the Clean Energy Finance Corporation rules to fund new coal-powered plants.
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Barnaby Joyce has warned that anti-Islamic statements could harm Australian trade deals and declared that he would give instructions not to preference Pauline Hanson’s party before the Liberal party in federal seats.
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Queensland used to have a tourism slogan, beautiful one day, perfect the next. As a state, it stands out for physical attributes but it also holds the same unique reputation for its politics, which continue to plague the Coalition.
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The outspoken South Australian Liberal senator Cory Bernardi will break away from the Turnbull government early this week to form his own conservative movement.
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If ever there was an issue to play into the rise of populist politics, it has to be the Australian-Singapore defence training bunfight in central Queensland.
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Malcolm Turnbull has revealed he donated $1.75m to the Liberal party, after dodging the question just hours earlier in a speech to the National Press Club in which he said public information should be released “as close to real time as possible”.
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Malcolm Turnbull’s reported $2m donation to the Liberal party during the 2016 election campaign has not appeared in the much anticipated 2015-16 party disclosures.
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Bill Shorten has acknowledged voter anger and declining political loyalty while placing housing affordability, jobs and political integrity measures at the centre of Labor’s agenda.
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Australia must not become an “unskilled enclave in a modernising Asia”, where Australian workers lose out to exploited overseas workers, Bill Shorten will warn in a major speech to lay out Labor’s 2017 agenda.
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Two former school principals Chris Bonnor and Bernie Shepherd have said private schools are rapidly becoming public schools, based on the amount of public funding they receive.
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Donald Trump has committed to honour the deal with Australia to take refugees from Manus Island and Nauru – even as his ban against refugees, migrants and visitors from some Muslim-majority countries is enforced.
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Malcolm Turnbull has walked back a commitment to ratify the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement in parliament because it is not clear whether the legislation will pass.
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Julia Gillard has nominated the Gonski school reforms as one of the areas of which she is most proud because the policy had moved the debate towards an acceptance of needs-based school funding on all sides of politics.
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Most Australians feel positively about Australia Day but most Indigenous Australians feel that it celebrates invasion and should be changed to a new date with a different name.
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Labor has accused Malcolm Turnbull of putting his own political purposes ahead of national security by publicising plans for a secret briefing for political parties to head off “Russian-style” cyber attacks.
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Mike Baird, the architect of council amalgamations, the greyhound ban and steward of his predecessor’s lockout laws, has called last drinks.
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In 1992 the immigration minister Gerry Hand argued that there was grave potential for Australia to become an easy target for spontaneous mass movement unless the Keating government introduced mandatory detention of asylum seekers.
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As politicians seek to understand a post-Brexit, post-Trump world, the release of the 1992-93 Australian cabinet documents reminds us that there was a time when a different conversation going on between leaders and voters.
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While Meat Loaf was singing “I would do anything for love but I won’t do that”, Australian voters were sending a similar message to cleanskin Liberal opposition leader John Hewson during the March election.
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The former Indigenous affairs minister Robert Tickner has used the release of the 1992-93 cabinet documents to urge leaders to “command the authority of the nation” to improve Indigenous incarceration rates and end the “national embarrassment”.
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In 1992 Australia’s defence minister Robert Ray argued that a ban on gay defence force members should remain because homosexual behaviour destroyed the intimate group bonding of heterosexuals and violated their privacy.
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Bob Brown has said the Left Renewal splinter group established by unnamed Greens members looks like a hoax, warning that no member who rejects law and order should remain a member of the Greens.
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The barbecue stoppers this summer will be freedom of speech, section 18C and political correctness gone mad, according to the conservative backbencher Eric Abetz.
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The Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, has hit back at a new hard left group within his party’s rank and file with a stated aim of bringing about the end of capitalism – telling them to consider finding a new political home.
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The federal resources minister has accused the ABC of reporting fake news and thrown his weight behind the energy giant Adani, amid Indian finance ministry investigations into the company.
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Australia is starting to see the beginnings of popular disaffection with the political class which has led to the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit vote, according to the authors of a major academic review of the 2016 federal election.
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Jamie Briggs, who resigned from the Turnbull ministry after a complaint about his behaviour in a Hong Kong bar, has been appointed to the board of a government enterprise, the Moorebank Intermodal Company Limited.
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The parliament has risen. The political Christmas parties are almost over. And what have we got to show for 2016?
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The Turnbull government has dumped the $1.7bn child and adult public dental scheme (CAPDS) proposed in its pre-election budget after it failed to get agreement from the states.
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George Brandis has appointed constitutional lawyer Stephen Donaghue as solicitor general, seven weeks after the former solicitor general Justin Gleeson resigned citing an irretrievably broken relationship with the attorney general.
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Energy suppliers, business groups and consumers have joined in an unlikely coalition to warn that a failure to provide climate policy certainty would cost all Australians and lead to higher costs.
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The Turnbull government is planning to charge competitors to the National Broadband Network a levy to help pay for rural broadband services.
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The Human Rights Commission president, Gillian Triggs, has said any weakening of section 18C and 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act would be a seriously retrograde step and has criticised coverage of recent cases as distorted and one-sided.
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Malcolm Turnbull has promised work on a rail connection to Sydney’s second airport would begin when the Badgerys Creek airport opens or soon afterwards as he prepared to sign off on the plans.
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Barnaby Joyce has delivered a strong defence of the 457 visa program and its importance to regional Australia, saying temporary workers are essential to fill demand for jobs such as doctors and meatworkers.
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A cost-benefit analysis for moving the commonwealth’s pesticides regulator to Barnaby Joyce’s own electorate has found significant risks, which if not managed properly could cost the agriculture sector up to $193m a year.
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Nick Xenophon says he will not deal with any government legislation in the final week of the parliament until the dispute over water allocations in the Murray Darling Basin plan are resolved.
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The Turnbull government’s legislative agenda is in doubt after Barnaby Joyce rejected a deal to release 450 gigalitres of environmental water to South Australia, a stand which may jeopardise Nick Xenophon’s votes on other legislation.
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The chair of the Coalition’s inquiry into the Racial Discrimination Act, Ian Goodenough, has said the laws need to be fine-tuned to allow free speech to “bridge cultural differences”.
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The education minister, Simon Birmingham, has revealed strict new rules for courses and training organisations in the VET student loans program that will penalise colleges with less than 75% pass rates by restricting enrolments.
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George Christensen’s proposed ban on 457 visas in central and north Queensland would hit the region’s hospitals and healthcare providers hard, according to a Guardian analysis.
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The Coalition government will crack down on foreign workers by forcing them to leave Australia within 60 days instead of 90 if they lose their jobs.
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The outspoken Liberal National party backbencher George Christensen has attacked a proposal by Labor to introduce a new parliamentary code of race ethics to counterbalance the return of One Nation, branding the concept “politically correct social engineering”.
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Malcolm Turnbull has declared Bill Shorten a rank opportunist and hypocrite for his crackdown on 457 visas while opposing a higher tax on backpackers who are on working holiday visas.
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Malcolm Turnbull has suggested Donald Trump’s message about driving economic growth had vindicated his message during the Australian election campaign for “jobs and growth”.
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It is tempting to see the huge swing against the National party at the Orange byelection as a Trump/Brexit-style wave hitting the Australian shores.
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The New South Wales deputy premier, Troy Grant, has stood down as National party leader after a massive swing in the state seat of Orange which could see the National party lose the formerly safe state seat.
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The woman who lodged a section 18C complaint against Bill Leak has accused the the cartoonist’s lawyers of trying to coax the case into court because they were confident they would win.
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The Turnbull government has given its strongest signal yet that a deal is in the wind with the United States to settle 1,800 refugees from Nauru and Manus Island.
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The energy and environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, has rejected his environment committee chairman Craig Kelly’s assessment that the Paris agreement on climate change is dead with Donald Trump as president.
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There is a rest area on the way into Young in southern New South Wales that has become a makeshift camp for backpackers waiting for the start of the Australian cherry-picking season.
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The federal court has thrown out a lawsuit brought under the Racial Discrimination Act against three Queensland University of Technology students under section 18C.
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The Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson has referred the salmon farming giant Tassal to the Senate for a potential breach of parliamentary privilege after allegations on Four Corners that the company attempted to influence a Senate inquiry witness.
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The attorney general, George Brandis, has claimed he had no knowledge that finance department officials had warned the Abbott government against allowing former Family First senator Bob Day to move his office to a building he had owned.
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Backpackers should be taxed to restore the balance between imported labour and young local people who need a start, the health minister, Sussan Ley, has said.
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The former trade minister Andrew Robb did not talk to Malcolm Turnbull before taking on his role as an economic consultant with the Chinese company that operates the Darwin port.
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Family First senator Bob Day may stay on in the Senate if a new investor revives his embattled building company.
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Joel Fitzgibbon has criticised the National Farmers Federation for being the flag bearer for the government’s planned backpacker tax and has asked it to work with him to get a better deal for farmers.
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Gina Rinehart’s joint venture with Chinese-owned Shanghai Cred has increased its bid for S Kidman and Co to $386.5m.
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It was probably inevitable that the backpacker tax debate would descend to a pop-up beach in a London tube station.
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Barnaby Joyce has rejected suggestions that he changed the Hansard in a dispute which led to the agriculture department secretary, Paul Grimes, being sacked.
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Barnaby Joyce has described the Labor party as communists and has justified concern about foreign investment because people are not prepared to “die for a rented country”.
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Tony Abbott’s local campaign director, Walter Villatora, has called on Malcolm Turnbull to ensure there are genuine plebiscites for all New South Wales party members rather than pandering to lobbyists and party powerbrokers.
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The recent treatment of public servants reflects a change in the culture whereby department heads will tell ministers what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear, according to a senior bureaucrat sacked by the Howard government.
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The solicitor general, Justin Gleeson, has resigned. Do not consider this a backward step on Gleeson’s part.
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An all-Australian consortium bidding $386m for the S Kidman and Co cattle empire has confirmed it would divide most of the Kidman land between the four families involved in the deal.
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Malcolm Turnbull is expected to support a motion to the New South Wales Liberal state council from Tony Abbott’s own Warringah branches which could open up preselections to ordinary members for all federal and NSW candidates.
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Cabinet secretary Arthur Sinodinos has called for all members of the New South Wales Liberal party to been given a say on reforms which would open up preselection processes for MPs.
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Cabinet secretary Arthur Sinodinos has quoted Labor powerbroker Don Farrell’s intention to change his vote on marriage equality to justify the Coalition’s position on a plebiscite, saying sometimes party members have to compromise in order to keep a unified party position.
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An independent national school funding body – as recommended by the Gonski report – should be included as a part of any new agreements with the states, in a bid to remove the politics of school funding, a school expert has said.
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It is the regular parliamentary ritual that makes journalists hearts sing and politicians hearts contract – the register of members and senators’ interests.
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The treasurer, Scott Morrison, has defended private school funding, accusing Bill Shorten of playing “bogeyman politics” but said the Coalition’s new school funding agreements for 2018 would be based on need.
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Former resources minister Ian Macfarlane said he checked with the prime minister’s office prior to accepting a job as chief executive of the Queensland Resources Council, following accusations he had breached the ministerial code.
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Labor plans to grill bank chiefs on whether senior management puts pressure on frontline staff to upsell inappropriate products such as higher mortgages and credit card limits, even without financial remuneration involved.
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Senior Labor frontbencher Jenny Macklin has has accused the Coalition of planning another round of welfare cuts after social services minister Christian Porter’s recent criticism of supplementary payments for Newstart recipients.
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The former resources minister Ian Macfarlane has taken up a job as the chief executive of the Queensland Resources Council, six months after Tony Abbott called on the sector to “demonstrate their gratitude” to him for scrapping the mining tax.
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The Coalition has hit back at some states’ claims that the first Gonski school funding agreements signed by Labor were designed as a transition to bring all states and territories up to a similar funding level.
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The social services minister Christian Porter has accused welfare bodies of lacking imagination for calling for an increase in the Newstart unemployment payment.
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The education minister, Simon Birmingham, has warned the Coalition could make changes to school funding deals within the current legislation, thereby avoiding a Senate vote which is likely to fail.
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You may have noticed a schoolyard fight between the states and the commonwealth this week.
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The New South Wales education minister, Adrian Piccoli, has warned he will publish full results of commonwealth funding cuts in new school agreements which he says would increase funding to some of the most expensive private schools while cutting funds to public schools.
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NSW education minister Adrian Piccoli has warned any attempt by the federal government to cut school funding is a broken promise and would mark a return to the “dark old days” when public schools lost out.
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Hands up, who knows the point of super?
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The education minister, Simon Birmingham, will argue that Labor’s school funding agreements with state governments were a “corruption” of the original Gonski report as he meets state ministers on Friday to thrash out funding deals for 2018-19.
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Labor has committed to supporting backpacker tax legislation if the Coalition revises the policy to a more acceptable compromise – a position attacked by the Greens as destroying Australia’s competitive edge.
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A decision on the backpacker tax appears imminent, with Coalition sources suggesting the tax could be cut from the proposed 32.5% rate to 18%-19%.
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Scott Morrison has ordered the sale of a further 16 Australian residential properties, the owners of which were found to be in breach of the foreign investment rules.
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Labor has accused the Coalition of setting the dates of the bank chief parliamentary hearings to suit the banks before the parliamentary committee had even been formed.
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Malcolm Turnbull has rejected George Christensen’s call for an end to immigration from countries experiencing violent extremism and Pauline Hanson’s anti-Muslim rhetoric, describing it has “fundamentally wrong”.
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There is more than a little yellow peril in the latest political donations debate, which began with Labor senator Sam Dastyari’s acceptance of payments from companies, some of which had links to the Chinese government.
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A parliamentary library paper has contradicted the claim by small business ombudsman Kate Carnell that her banking inquiry has the same powers as a royal commission.
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There is a proxy war going on in the New South Wales Liberal party right now. It is about the party rules: who can join, how they join and what they get when they join.
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The embattled Labor senator Sam Dastyari has stepped down from the frontbench amid questions about donations from a wealthy Chinese businessman.
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John Howard has called on Malcolm Turnbull and Mike Baird to change the membership rules of the New South Wales Liberal party, describing the state division as close to a “closed shop” and less representative of ordinary voters.
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This is a story with a long tail. As long as a dragon’s tail and with just as many scales.
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Sam Dastyari has rejected the prime minister’s characterisation of his donation as “cash for comment”, saying he had always supported Labor’s stance on the South China Sea.
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Bill Shorten has urged the prime minister to use his overseas visit to make it clear “foreign interests” should not give donations to Australian political parties as Malcolm Turnbull attends the G20 summit in China.
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A new paper suggests the Coalition and Labor “largely agree” on superannuation policy and if that measure does not pass the parliament there is little hope of getting any other budget reform done.
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The Turnbull government has continued to cop flak from Labor and the right wing of the prime minister’s own party for being the first government to lose a vote in the lower house for more than 40 years.
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Labor’s Tony Burke has called for action on political donation laws for foreign companies, saying Sam Dastyari’s acceptance of the $1,670.82 donation from a Chinese businessman was “way outside community standards”.
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The Turnbull government has lost its first votes on the floor of the House of Representatives as Labor intensified its political attack on the prime minister and the Coalition using the spearhead of the banking royal commission.
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The Liberal chairman of the Coalition’s environment policy committee, Craig Kelly, has questioned solar and wind power subsidies and would like a cost-benefit analysis of future emission reductions policy, due to be reviewed next year.
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Conservatives are flexing their muscle ahead of the opening of the 45th parliament, with government MPs warning explicitly that marriage equality is dead without a plebiscite, and the push to overhaul the Racial Discrimination Act gathering pace.
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The climate sceptic Liberal MP Craig Kelly has been appointed chairman of the backbench environment and energy committee, with National party MP Kevin Hogan as secretary.
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Scott Morrison has asked the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to investigate the national dairy industry as the agriculture minister, Barnaby Joyce, emerged from a dairy crisis meeting declaring the days of $1-a-litre milk had to end.
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Scott Morrison has said a culture shift in banking is required and suggests bankers should serve their clients the way good doctors care for their patients.
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The opposition and minor parties could force a rare and powerful “commission of inquiry” into the banks if the Coalition refuses a royal commission, according to the clerk of the Senate, Rosemary Laing.
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Bill Shorten has offered Malcolm Turnbull a compromise on superannuation reform to remove the backdating on the $500,000 lifetime cap in return for lower thresholds for high-income contributions.
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“Social cohesion is not a destination,” says Andrew Markus. “We don’t get to the destination and say we’ve done it. It’s something we need to work at.”
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If the Coalition bows to backbench pressure to lift the lifetime superannuation contributions cap from $500,000 to $750,000 it could cost the budget more than the existing regime, parliamentary budget office (PBO) analysis has shown.
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Bill Shorten says an analysis by the parliamentary library shows the number of complaints to the financial ombudsman service (FOS) increased by 60% in the past seven years while bank profits have skyrocketed.
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Inequality in Australia has grown between 2011 and 2014 and its impact on the economy could cost up to $500 per person by 2019-2020.
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Coalition marriage equality campaigner Warren Entsch has supported a February plebiscite and backed a simple question such as “do you approve of a law to permit people of the same sex to marry?”
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The minister for human services, Alan Tudge, has said there is still public support for offshore detention in the wake of the Nauru files published by Guardian Australia.
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The Liberal senator Dean Smith says the Coalition party room view has moved on reform of the Racial Discrimination Act after a former federal judge suggested amendments to create a more “defensible balance” between free speech and hate speech.
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So you have seen the milking cows going to the abattoir and seen the footage of the dairy farmers walking off the land. There you are in the supermarket aisle, in front of the milk fridge. What to buy?
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A new law designed to protect small businesses from unfair contracts could force milk processors to change supply agreements with dairy farmers as the industry comes under intense pressure over the price crisis.
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One of Australia’s leading members of the Jewish community has described any attempt to water down the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) as a government signal that the public promotion of racism would be tolerated.
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Embattled milk processor Murray Goulburn has backed a commodity milk price index as a way of providing more transparency for dairy farmers who are facing mounting debts after a price cut by the cooperative and followed by Fonterra.
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One concessional loan has been approved under the Coalition’s dairy rescue package, designed to ease the crisis caused by a retrospective price cut that has left producers left owing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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A Senate inquiry into allegations of sexual assault and child abuse at Australia’s detention centre on Nauru will probably go ahead after key crossbenchers said they were likely to support Labor’s motion.
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The New South Wales Greens senator Lee Rhiannon has warned Labor to abide by fairer Senate rules in the allocation of six and three-year Senate terms following the double dissolution election.
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When the Abbott government took office, a prime ministerial staffer asked the Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells to clarify details of her house in Umbria listed on her declaration of interests.
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Jeff Morris, the whistleblower who revealed a financial planning scandal at the Commonwealth Bank, has described the Coalition’s plan to haul the banks in front of a parliamentary committee as weak and “just for show”.
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Bank bosses will have to front up to a parliamentary committee annually to explain their actions on interest rates and other behaviour under new rules announced by Malcolm Turnbull.
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The conservative Liberal senator Cory Bernardi has questioned the temperament and qualifications of the new Indigenous co-commissioner Mick Gooda, saying he was surprised his “ancestry seems a more important qualification than judicial experience”.
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As we saw with the recent ABC Four Corners report on juvenile detention, there are times when the path to a royal commission is unavoidable. When public sentiment moves to such an extent, it’s a crazy brave government that stands in the way.
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George Brandis has said he had considered adding an Indigenous commissioner to the Northern Territory juvenile detention inquiry before the appointed commissioner, Brian Martin, stepped down because of concerns over a perception of a conflict of interest.
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There are some big questions floating around in politics right now, none more so than the one relating to the forces behind Brexit, Trump and – in the eyes of one Coalition frontbencher – Australia’s federal election.
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Former Greens leader Bob Brown has intensified his attack on sitting NSW Greens senator Lee Rhiannon, accusing her of holding the party back, not hitting a chord with voters and introducing factionalism to the party.
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The Northern Territory chief minister has claimed a cover-up kept vital information from the “upper echelons of government” amid questions about its lack of sufficient action on multiple and frequent allegations of abuse inside its juvenile detention centres.
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Cabinet has resolved to let the prime minister make a captain’s pick on whether to nominate Kevin Rudd for the role of United Nations secretary general.
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Malcolm Turnbull has dismissed Julie Bishop’s argument that a nomination for Kevin Rudd for the UN secretary general position is not an endorsement.
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The Labor senator Pat Dodson has called on Malcolm Turnbull to widen the royal commission into Northern Territory juvenile detention to examine systemic practices across all states, while making the link between juvenile detention and Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers.
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Julie Bishop has described Kevin Rudd as qualified to be a candidate for the United Nations secretary general position a day after treasurer, Scott Morrison, scorned his suitability for the role.
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Humanitarian groups are calling on the Turnbull government to expand the terms of reference for the proposed royal commission into Northern Territory juvenile detention to include all children, including minors in immigration detention.
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Scott Morrison has made it clear that he does not support Kevin Rudd’s nomination for the position of secretary general of the United Nations.
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Malcolm Turnbull has refused Bill Shorten’s invitation to make a joint submission to defend penalty rates, stepping back from any involvement in the Fair Work Commission’s review.
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The economist Ross Garnaut has criticised official budget forecasts, warned of looming economic time bombs in the Australian economy and described the recent election as a reminder that policies need to be equitable.
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Malcolm Turnbull has warned Australians that the threat of terrorism in Australia is real as the Coalition prepares to push ahead with new measures for indefinite detention of some convicted terrorists after attacks in Nice and Kabul.
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New Nationals cabinet minister Matthew Canavan believes his old boss Barnaby Joyce’s “rock star” profile has given the party its best electoral opportunity since Doug Anthony was the leader in the 1970s.
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The deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, has rejected One Nation’s anti-Islamic policies, arguing that comparing all Muslims to terrorists was like equating all Catholics with the “crazy criminals” of the Irish Republican Army.
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The Queensland Nationals MP George Christensen has threatened to vote against Coalition superannuation changes, immediately threatening one of the Turnbull government’s key policies two days after his ministry was formed.
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The new resources minister, Matthew Canavan, has warned there is still a level of uncertainty about the impact of carbon emissions on global warming and described the Adani Carmichael coalmine as an “incredibly exciting project” for Australia.
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Malcolm Turnbull has told his party room the election raised “fundamental issues” about democracy, signalling he was looking closely at rules around robocalls and text messages following Labor’s Medicare advertising campaign.
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Malcolm Turnbull will come under intense pressure to change his superannuation reforms in a marathon party room meeting, which will also involve top party strategists facing frustrated MPs critical of the election campaign.
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The deputy Liberal leader, Julie Bishop, has supported plebiscites that allow ordinary party members to vote to preselect candidates as a way of putting more women into parliament.
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Tony Abbott says he was advised during his prime ministership that Australian homegrown terrorists would find new and creative ways to kill people, as at least 84 people were confirmed dead in an attack in France.
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Barnaby Joyce has urged Nationals MPs to regard the strong election result as a “stepping stone” to greater electoral gains on the eve of negotiations with Malcolm Turnbull to determine the ministry.
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One week after Australians went to the polls, counting continued over the weekend with the Coalition inching towards a result where it is likely to form government.
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Australia’s ruling rightwing coalition has been pushed to the brink in a shock election result that saw prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberal party lose at least 11 seats in the 150-strong House of Representatives.
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Malcolm Turnbull’s Coalition has been pushed to the brink in a shock election result which saw the Liberal party lose at least 11 seats, with 30% of the vote still left to be counted.
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The key moments of a dramatic Australian election night that left the final result still tantalisingly uncertain.
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Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten delivered their final pitches to voters on the last day of a marathon eight-week election campaign as a poll pointed to a late swing back to the Coalition.
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Malcolm Turnbull has been forced to guarantee patients will not pay more as a result of the Medicare rebate freeze, but has later admitted he cannot control what doctors can charge.
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When compared with Brexit or the Trump ascendancy, Australia’s election on 2 July may appear beige. But look closer and there are similar currents swirling through this marathon eight-week campaign.
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The Coalition’s full company tax cut plan and many of its long-stalled “zombie” savings have little chance of becoming law after the election, a Guardian Australia survey has revealed, despite Malcolm Turnbull’s claim only Labor would face the “chaos” of negotiations with minor parties and independents.
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The independent Cowper candidate Rob Oakeshott has booked blanket commercials for the past two days during radio shows of the 2GB broadcasters Ray Hadley and Alan Jones in his area as part of a strategy to combat their editorials against him.
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The Coalition has said it will collect an extra $2bn over the next four years by cracking down on welfare and pension recipients.
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The New South Wales National party has issued a statement defending a television commercial in New England that shows a woman discussing her relationship with the independent candidate Tony Windsor and then rejecting his texts for “another chance”.
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Independents have hit back at Malcolm Turnbull’s attack during his campaign speech, describing the prime minister as misleading, arrogant, disrespectful and part of the political elite.
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Labor’s policy measures would increase the deficit over the next four years by $16.5bn, leaving a total deficit of $101bn compared with the Coalition’s $84.5bn, but both Labor and the Coalition would return to surplus by 2020-21.
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Malcolm Turnbull appealed directly to marginal seat voters in a campaign launch speech that urged Australians to resist the “roll of the dice on independents or minor parties” and return the Coalition government to ensure stability.
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You may have missed it but this week Barnaby Joyce had his big moment – as a newish Nationals leader releasing his agriculture policy.
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Malcolm Turnbull has used the win by the leave campaign to warn that the result could cause a “shock” and he has urged Australians to vote for the Coalition government’s “strong economic leadership”.
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The agriculture minister, Barnaby Joyce, has promised to establish a $4.5bn regional investment bank which would bring together existing rural concessional loans and could include some loans for private projects.
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We have news at last regarding the Liberal campaign launch. Labor launched last weekend, the second last weekend of the actual campaign. The Liberal party will launch this weekend, the last weekend of the actual campaign. The reason parties wait so long is because the party organisation has to pay for the campaign once they ring the bell. Such is politics.
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Senior Labor frontbencher Penny Wong has warned a plebiscite could put marriage equality “out of reach” in the same way a referendum sank the campaign for a republic.
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Labor would reverse the government’s cuts to bulk-billing incentives for pathology and imaging by restoring an incentive to pathologists and radiologists to bulk bill.
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Bill Shorten promised to reverse cuts to pathology and unveiled a new jobs plan at Labor’s official campaign launch, which acknowledged past disunity but claimed the party was ready to govern again.
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Malcolm Turnbull ruled out a change to penalty rates in the next term of government and Bill Shorten called on the prime minister to lead on marriage equality regardless of who was elected in the third and final leaders’ debate.
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The West Australian National party has launched a scathing attack on the federal Liberal party over its preference deal with Labor, as state president James Hayward declared it a “dirty deal” to enshrine the duopoly of the major parties.
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Malcolm Turnbull has warned Labor’s consideration for an Indigenous treaty risks damaging the push for constitutional recognition and has urged Bill Shorten to remain focused on constitutional change.
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This week the Coalition and Labor were keen to sell their economic plans for Australia. Voters might be listening more carefully if the costings of political parties had not blunted their messages.
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Tony Windsor has accused Barnaby Joyce of a conflict of interest on water security, claiming the federal National party took more than $80,000 in donations from mining company Santos after the water trigger legislation was introduced.
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It was the debate that never was.
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Barnaby Joyce has rejected outright the use of an export power in the constitution to stop the Shenhua Watermark mine, saying it would be “economically and socially disastrous”.
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Malcolm Turnbull has rejected calls for a royal commission as a third bank faces legal action for rate-rigging allegations, saying the financial watchdog was “sinking its fangs” into suspects.
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Constitutional expert George Williams has backed claims that if the election delivers a hung parliament, independents do not need to sign agreements to prove to the governor general that a major party can govern.
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Barnaby Joyce and the former independent Tony Windsor sparred over mining, coal seam gas, the National Broadband Network, health and education funding in their first public debate of the election campaign on the ABC’s Q&A program.
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Families currently using childcare are probably better off under the Labor policy, while families with children just born are better off, at this stage, under the Coalition, according to Australia’s largest childcare provider Goodstart Early Learning.
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Independent Cathy McGowan has used her election campaign launch to outline an unashamedly progressive platform, pledging to support legislated time limits for refugee detention, marriage equality, renewables, regional employment and fixed four-year terms.
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The Greens want to regulate the electricity system to ensure a “fair price” is paid for solar-generated electricity and ensure a “legal right” to connect to the grid by forcing energy companies to prove they cannot connect a consumer.
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Loyalty. It’s a good thing in a dog. What about in a voter?
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Labor has unveiled its biggest promise to date in a $3bn childcare package which would provide greater rebates to families with incomes under $150,000.
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Labor has pledged it would close the Catalyst arts funding body established by George Brandis and return any remaining funds to the Australia Council.
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Malcolm Turnbull has restated his belief in a cap on individual political donations and a ban on all donations from corporations and unions but has not committed to act on it.
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Malcolm Turnbull has defended his changes to superannuation policy by saying he is the “prime minister for all Australians” after one of his ministers committed to raise the changes in the party room after the election.
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A major seniors’ lobby group has warned the Coalition there is “red hot” anger over changes that will push 100,000 people off the aged pension and said seniors would rally during the election campaign.
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The cabinet secretary, Arthur Sinodinos, has committed the government to take the superannuation policy back to the party room after confusion around the details of the package within the Coalition.
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Neil Mitchell: Are you aware of the transition to retirement scheme?
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Who would you rather have a beer with, Malcolm Turnbull or Bill Shorten?
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The Greens want to use a royal commission to examine whether banks should be broken up to split the retail arms from their investment and financial advice arms in response to recent scandals.
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The New South Wales Liberal party is scrambling to finalise candidates for western Sydney while the fate of the international development minister, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, hangs in the balance.
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Malcolm Turnbull conceded bipartisanship on climate change was desirable and committed to meet higher targets if set by the global community in the second leaders’ debate of the Australian election campaign.
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Barnaby Joyce has drawn a link between the Gillard government’s live export ban and the increase of asylum seeker boats, effectively accusing the Indonesian government of allowing people smuggling.
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The embattled Labor frontbencher, David Feeney, has struggled to outline Labor’s position on big-ticket budget items in a car-crash TV interview seized upon by the Coalition trying to mask its own stumbling performance on spending figures.
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Meet the unknown candidate of Indi, Labor’s Eric Kerr.
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The agriculture minister, Barnaby Joyce, has predicted the dairy price crisis will widen, while Labor’s agriculture spokesman, Joel Fitzgibbon, has written to the banks to urge a “sympathetic approach” to debt management.
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The Liberal party’s Indi candidate, Sophie Mirabella, has been cut loose by the Coalition. The deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce has been openly mocking her and senior government sources claim she has been starved of Liberal party funding apart from that which she can raise locally.
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In the battle for Indi, the Nationals candidate, Marty Corboy, has been dubbed the Steven Bradbury of the race – the one who could come through the middle of the fight between the current MP, Cathy McGowan, and her predecessor, the Liberal Sophie Mirabella.
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The Turnbull government has promised “the most significant package of education quality reforms in a generation” worth $73.6bn.
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Two young Australians, representing a Muslim and a Christian organisation, have joined forces to call on people who earn $80,000 who got the $6 tax cut in the last budget to donate it to charity.
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In the first debate of the election campaign, 100 voters declared Bill Shorten the winner over Malcolm Turnbull by 42 votes to 29, with 29 undecided after both flagged new measures on health spending.
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Malcolm Turnbull says the objective of the government’s Syrian refugee settlement program is to place people where there are opportunities to work, underlining LNP MP George Christensen’s opposition to settling the refugees in his Queensland region.
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The assistant minister for multicultural affairs, Craig Laundy, has assured LNP member George Christensen that no Syrian refugees would be settled in his region of Mackay after the outspoken backbencher complained about the unemployment rate there.
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The education minister, Simon Birmingham, has rejected claims by a Queensland principal that casual teachers funded under the Gonski program at a Townsville primary school may not receive new contracts.
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The major parties have spent much of the second day of the close-run election campaign accusing each other of cosying up to the Greens.
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The phony campaign is over. The true believers are heading for the barricades. It’s time for the watchers to hurry up and wait.
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Here endeth the 44th parliament. As chaotic as the 43rd. Not hung.
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The Liberal senator Bill Heffernan has warned an “Asian facilitation culture” is creeping into Australian politics made worse by the professionalisation of politics – a day after Tony Abbott revealed he was offered $5,000 in cash as a young MP.
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Tony Abbott was offered $5,000 cash in an envelope as he was leaving a drinks party hosted by a “well-known millionaire” when he was a “relatively” new member of parliament.
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Tony Abbott and Bronwyn Bishop. Elected on the same day to the House of Representatives in neighbouring blue-ribbon Sydney electorates. At the conservative end of a conservative party. So close were they that Abbott claimed he was Bishop’s ideological love child.
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A decision to change the funding model for aged care which has allowed the government to save $1.2bn is a “Band-Aid over a broken system”, according to a key aged-care group.
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A program that has increased the number of university students from lower socio-economic backgrounds by one third has been cut by $152.2m in the budget.
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Clive Palmer will not stand for election to the House of Representatives in his Queensland seat of Fairfax, but his Palmer United party will contest Senate elections in every state – leaving the option that Palmer will run for the upper house.
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A $2bn water infrastructure loan facility is the centrepiece of the Coalition’s regional policy, to provide concessional loans to the states and territories for projects.
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The Turnbull government has claimed a saving of $2bn in higher education after dumping the deregulation of university fees and delaying all other changes to a discussion paper due after the election.
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Aged care funding for nursing homes will be cut by $1.2bn over four years in response to higher than expected growth in expenditure and Medicare benefits will remain frozen for a further two years.
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As budget portraits go, Scott Morrison’s picture on the front of the tabloids on his big morning was more eHarmony than enticing.
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A Senate committee will urge the Coalition to fund research into a national anti-corruption system after the committee heard “overwhelming public support” for the concept.
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A federal anti-corruption body would save millions of dollars in federal funding, restore public confidence and play an important educative role, according to Dio Wang, the chair of the Senate committee looking into the establishment of such a body.
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Scott Morrison has declared his first budget will not be “a typical budget”, while hinting at tax cuts and boosting education spending ahead of an expected double dissolution election on 2 July.
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The Coalition has announced $1.2bn in extra funding for education over three years from 2018, conditional on the states accepting testing and minimum standards.
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Student loans for the private vocational education and training (VET) sector could be capped and restricted to certain courses, a government discussion paper has suggested.
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Australia’s treasurer, Scott Morrison, has blocked the sale of Australia’s largest landholder S Kidman & Co to a majority Chinese-owned consortium because it “may be contrary to the national interest”.
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Tony Abbott says he does not expect the Liberal party to ever go back on the decision to replace him as leader even though the polls continue to slide for his replacement Malcolm Turnbull.
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The investigative journalist Nick McKenzie has told a Senate hearing that he has seen major evidence of corruption on taxpayer-funded federal projects involving contractors and subcontractors that could be exposed by a national integrity commission.
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Cabinet secretary Arthur Sinodinos has justified not appearing before a Senate committee into political donations on the grounds that former Labor minister Mark Arbib refused to front a Senate inquiry into the home insulation program.
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Labor’s climate policy has won unexpected praise from the Business Council of Australia’s chief executive, Jennifer Westacott, who said the plan could provide a platform for bipartisanship and “build a bridge” for an emission trading scheme.
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Family First senator Bob Day has cleared the first hurdle in his challenge to Senate voting reforms after the chief justice of the high court referred the case to the full bench, for hearing during the budget week.
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Companies operating out of overseas tax havens should be penalised, whistleblowers financially rewarded and top companies that transfer money offshore publicly named by the tax office, says the Greens’ tax policy for the 2016 election.
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It was a special kind of crazy that gripped the parliament on the last day of sitting before the budget.
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Australian federal police are investigating whether former government minister Stuart Robert committed a crime when he travelled to China on a “private trip” to help a Liberal donor.
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We have seen a lot of shouting in the Senate this week. We have heard a lot of words, a lot of speculation, a lot of conjecture. But remember this – there are rules within which the government MUST work.
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Malcolm Turnbull has embraced a plan to strengthen legal protections for small businesses and farmers against abuse of market power by big businesses – a change he is believed to have previously opposed – in a major win for the small business lobby and the National party.
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Pressure is building for a royal commission into the financial industry after a cross-parliamentary group backed a full investigation into life insurance, forestry managed investment schemes and financial planning.
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Bill Shorten will use a major speech to commit Labor to the concept of full employment while painting Malcolm Turnbull as a Liberal “paid advocate”, who has deserted his principles on marriage equality, the republic and climate change.
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The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, accused Malcolm Turnbull of giving up on the “hard things” on the eve of the prime minister’s six-month anniversary in the top job.
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Independent senator Nick Xenophon has called on the major parties to agree to a more transparent parliamentary entitlement scheme as parliamentarians await the release of the review in the wake of the Bronwyn Bishop choppergate scandal.
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Clive Palmer has refused to rule out running for the Senate, as 550 Queensland Nickel workers face continued uncertainty about their future.
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It is highly possible that I came to the bush at a time when I was ready to settle into myself. Its lack of frippery opened me up like a Y incision and forced me to look inside. Nature does that.
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It’s like a pub fight, according to one government source. Barnaby Joyce is fixing to take Tony Windsor outside once and for all and settle this thing. And he will be the one striding back into the pub – not the one standing outside with a bloody nose.
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The former independent MP Tony Windsor has declared he is standing for New England on “issues of the future”, describing his stand against Barnaby Joyce as a “David and Goliath battle”.
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The former independent Tony Windsor is expected to return to federal politics, announcing his intention on Thursday morning.
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Former independent Tony Windsor will announce on Thursday whether he will run against the deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce in the NSW electorate of New England.
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Public submissions have been invited to a Senate inquiry on the need for a national anti-corruption body – after the attorney general, George Brandis, told parliament that Australian federal politics had been “remarkably free of corruption”.
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It began like your awkward school reunion. Old ministers of the crown, milling around looking as useless as tits on a bull, mixing it with up and comers, lobbyists, pollsters, strategists and hangers-on.
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The Turnbull government has referred the leak of the draft white paper to the Australian federal police after the Australian published a story that claims the date of the acquisition of new submarines was delayed after the leadership change.
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A deal between the Coalition and the Greens on Senate voting reforms has paved the way for a double dissolution election anytime from 1 July.
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Labor and the Senate crossbench are refusing to allow the upper house to debate laws bringing in proposed new voting rules in an attempt to deny the government the chance to call a July double dissolution election.
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The Coalition has released its media package which will scrap cross-media ownership laws, while boosting local content incentives at the request of the National party.
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Bronwyn Bishop’s chief of staff, Damien Jones – who was linked to the travel claims that brought down her speakership – will sit in judgment of Liberal candidates in her seat of Mackellar in the upcoming preselection.
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Tony Windsor is looking more likely than ever to run against Barnaby Joyce in the upcoming election as polling reveals the former independent could beat the new Nationals leader if he receives Labor and Greens preferences.
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Hunter S Thompson was right in his excoriating obituary for Richard Nixon. Sometimes journalists need to get subjective to see public figures clearly.
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Chinese-state owned Shenhua company has applied for an extension to its exploration licence as doubts grow over the future of the $1.2bn mega-coalmine on the Liverpool Plains.
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The ultimate test for a parent is surely whether to vote for your own self-interest or for the interests of your children.
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Malcolm Turnbull has criticised Labor’s plan to end negative gearing on existing homes while confirming the government was looking at “every aspect” of the issue.
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Investors who borrow to invest in property and shares should have their deductions capped so the savings could be used to provide a new tax incentive for new affordable housing, says a budget submission by the Australian Council for Social Services.
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The New South Wales National party is planning a membership drive after experiencing renewed interest since the election of Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash to the leadership of the federal party.
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To gear or not to gear, that is the question.
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Scott Morrison has criticised Labor’s new policy to end negative gearing on existing homes and cut capital gains tax concessions but suggested the Coalition was also “keeping an open mind” on tax reform ahead of the budget.
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While the new Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce is a household name in Australia, his deputy Fiona Nash is far less known.
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Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash acknowledged in 2005 that copper was fast becoming “redundant” in the delivery of internet services and recommended the Howard government investigate the cost of fibre to the home.
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The Palmer United Party senator Dio Wang will attempt to amend the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) bill to create a national corruption body, similar to the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac).
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Labor has promised to crack down on the exploitation of workers by significantly increasing penalties for employers who underpay workers to more than $200,000 for individuals and more than $1m for corporations.
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Bill Shorten has urged the Turnbull government to drop the $160m plebiscite on marriage equality and allow members to vote on the issue in parliament, predicting it would pass if the Liberal party allowed a conscience vote.
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In 1990, Labor won another term in office. As Sinead O’Connor sang the hit song Nothing Compares 2 U, Australia slid into a recession and troops were sent off to the blockade that became the first Gulf war.
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Every so often in politics, a perfect storm rolls in. Thunder, lightning, squalls and a career-ending moment. In 1991, the Coronation Hill mining project was just such a storm.
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“We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.”
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Bob Hawke is here to talk about his government. He is 86 and walks with a stick up the stairs to a lectern for the release of the 1990-91 cabinet documents by the National Archives.
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The former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke has criticised Barack Obama’s presidency as “inadequate” for not using his influence to bring together Israel and the Palestinians and has called for China to engage on the issue and “change the chemistry” of the Middle East.
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The Turnbull ministry is three and a half months old and already there are two casualties. One looks fairly straightforward. The other, not so. In both cases, Malcolm Turnbull is well rid of them under the circumstances.
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Labor’s review of social policy will propose a complete overhaul of government “investment and support” early next year, based on six key areas and designed with the unlikely help of Tony Abbott.
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Patients’ out-of-pocket expenses could rise as a result of recommendations that 23 medical procedures should no longer be funded by Medicare, the president of the Australian Medical Association, Brian Owler, has warned.
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Tony Abbott’s former business advisory council chairman, Maurice Newman, has criticised Malcolm Turnbull and Barack Obama for prioritising “collectivist visions” over “private choice” in relation to climate change.
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Malcolm Turnbull has lifted the ban imposed by Tony Abbott on wind investment by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) before it was officially enacted, even though it remains Coalition policy to abolish the green bank.
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Budget deficits to 2018-19 will blow out to $38bn larger than expected, says a Deloitte Access Economics report, which blames the China slowdown and “gridlock” in the Senate for a cut in revenue.
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Tony Brennan is the British deputy high commissioner to Australia. In his spare time, he is a standup comedian.
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Following the Paris terrorist attacks, Malcolm Turnbull has reassured Australians that “while we can’t pretend the risk is not there”, Australia has been a successful multicultural nation with the best national security agencies in the world.
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They say the world is run by those who show up. Two young farmers have taken it literally and are determined to get to the United Nations Paris climate talks.
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The Coalition government is asking miners and coal seam gas companies to recognise that the “moral right” of farmers to determine what happens on their land overrides companies’ legal right to explore or mine.
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Foreign minister Julie Bishop has launched a bid to co-chair the Green Climate Fund once dubbed by Tony Abbott as the “Bob Brown bank”.
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Former Liberal party president Shane Stone has suggested a radical overhaul of land use in which states and mining companies would share revenue streams with landholders to overcome the conflict between farming and mining.
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Labor resources spokesman Gary Gray has warned the Coalition not to “interrupt” the historic constitutional relationship between the commonwealth and the states by changing the land access rights between farmers and mining companies.
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Energy minister Josh Frydenberg has supported farmers’ rights to reach agreement with mining companies on coal seam gas before resource development goes ahead, and will put the issue on the agenda for the Council of Australian Governments (Coag) energy council meeting.
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Nationals leader Warren Truss believes farmers should have the right to veto coal seam gas exploration and extraction on their properties, following a call by assistant health minister Fiona Nash for a change to state laws.
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Sir John Kerr, the Australian governor general who dismissed the former prime minister Gough Whitlam in 1975, first canvassed the possibility with Prince Charles as early as August of that year – two months before the constitutional crisis began, according to a new book.
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A federal redistribution proposed for New South Wales recommends abolishing the seat of Hunter held by Labor’s Joel Fitzgibbon and shuffling its electors between the existing seats of Charlton, New England and Paterson.
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On the day they were killed, Kim Hunt drove past a bright yellow canola paddock on Watch Hill farm to meet the school bus carrying her children, Fletcher, 10, Mia, eight, and Phoebe, six. The kids tumbled off the bus at 3.40pm, full of stories from the day, and had their afternoon tea. Kim sat with Fletcher, helping with his homework. As is often the way with children, his worries eventually rose to the surface. The kids at school had teased him about a footy match the day before – a game that his father had umpired. The accusation was his father Geoff had cheated as the umpire, favouring Fletcher. A number of kids at school had called them names. Kim played it down, as a parent does, trying to take the sting out of the taunt.
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The trade minister, Andrew Robb, has said Australia and the United States are within striking distance of a deal on the monopoly period for biologics medicines which could seal the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).
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Julie Bishop has declared it is time for “the whole nation to take stock” after the murder of a 58-year-old police worker in what the prime minister has described as a “terrorist incident”.
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Small towns are like tiny cities, stripped of the white noise. Their size makes it easier to see inside, like a house with the curtains flung open, but the human dynamics are the same.
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The coup that brought about Tony Abbott’s downfall as prime minister has caused bad blood in two blue ribbon seats in the Liberal party heartland of Sydney’s north shore.
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Malcolm Turnbull has revealed a bold new ministry which elevates New South Wales senator Marise Payne to become the first female defence minister and sees treasurer Joe Hockey dumped from the ministry and leaving the parliament.
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Liberal senator Cory Bernardi has raised the threat of a split in the Liberal party over the new leadership, invoking the damaging battle that saw Malcolm Turnbull lose his leadership in opposition over climate change policy.
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On the first day of Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership, three National party senators crossed the floor to support a Greens motion advocating a change in competition laws known as the effects test which would stop big business “abusing” market power.
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It was to his Christian faith that former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott turned to draw inspiration on his last day in office, quoting the Psalms “what shall I render unto the Lord for all his blessings to me?”
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The National party has negotiated a tougher Coalition agreement with Malcolm Turnbull which includes financial concessions for stay-at-home parents, moving responsibility for water from environment to agriculture and maintaining a plebiscite for same-sex marriage.
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Tony Abbott was the man who never let up. The man who had a plan to get to government but not beyond. The man who would never take his foot off the throat of any tribe that was not his own. He governed for his own. In the end, they disowned him.
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The Abbott government is descending into a damaging cycle of leadership manoeuvring and speculation as expectations grow the prime minister will face another challenge within months.
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The ACTU has decided not to go ahead with a federal court application regarding claims of apprehended bias against commissioner Dyson Heydon, who is overseeing the trade union royal commission.
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Former Howard minister, Larry Anthony, who lobbied for the $1.2bn Shenhua Watermark coalmine, has just been voted in as president of the National party and remains on the NSW lobbyist register in spite of claims he has removed himself.
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Tony Abbott has predicted the Coalition will win the Canning byelection, dismissing suggestions that his leadership is in trouble.
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A new study has found open-cut mines that modify groundwater levels can affect trees and ecosystems several kilometres away from mine sites.
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Australian government bureaucrats have admitted to a senate committee they discussed options with cruise operator Bill Milby which could have involved him hiring foreign crew under a foreign flag.
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The government should only strip dual nationals in Australia of citizenship for terrorist offences after a conviction, a government-dominated parliamentary committee has recommended.
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A parliamentary committee is expected to back the Abbott government’s plans to strip dual nationals of Australian citizenship, in spite of warnings from leading lawyers that the bill was poorly drafted and probably unconstitutional.
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A Tasmanian company says the Coalition’s proposed shipping laws – which relax the rules for foreign ships on domestic routes – may jeopardise its investment in a new ship worth more than $100m, the Senate has been told.
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Both sides of politics agree that a trade deal between China and Australia is a good thing but the so-called Chafta deal is looming as an issue that will dominate the spring parliamentary sitting sessions.
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Tony Abbott has rejected criticism from the Jewish community for comparing Isis to the Nazis, restating that “unlike previous evil-doers” such as Stalin and Hitler, Isis boasts added a “further dimension to this evil”.
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An Australian cruise operator has hit out at Tony Abbott after the prime minister suggested his allegations about departmental advice to sack Australian staff were not true.
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A cruise operator has alleged a government bureaucrat advised it to sack its Australian staff and hire foreign crew on cheaper wages to remain competitive under the Coalition’s proposed new shipping laws.
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An Australian navy lieutenant commander has broken down in tears in front of a Senate committee at the thought of being forced to leave her baby “to bond with someone else” as a result of the Coalition’s plans to end so-called double dipping on paid parental leave.
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The chairman of an Australian shipping company and a longtime member of the Liberal party has slammed the Coalition’s planned changes to shipping laws as directly contradicting Tony Abbott’s policy focus of “jobs and growth”.
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The $1.2bn Shenhua coalmine faces a significant setback after local landholders launched a legal challenge to the New South Wales government approval process over whether it properly considered the impact of the mine on the local koala population.
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The National Farmers’ Federation has questioned the timing of the Abbott government’s proposed change to environmental laws one week after the environment minister, Greg Hunt, received legal letters from farmer groups regarding the $1.2bn Shenhua Watermark coalmine.
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Tony Abbott says trials of a cashless debit card will help Indigenous communities lift their people up “by their bootstraps” and will ensure people do not “blow their dough” on harmful things.
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With Tony Abbott’s leadership coming under increasing pressure, foreign minister Julie Bishop has conceded Liberal MPs will be watching the Canning byelection closely but has predicted the government will win the 19 September poll.
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The human rights commissioner has described the bill to strip citizenship from dual nationals as “striking at the heart” of Australian multiculturalism.
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Constitutional lawyer George Williams has described the Abbott government’s bill to strip citizenship from dual nationals as “one of the most poorly drafted” he has seen and warned it would catch many Australians who have “nothing to do with terrorism”.
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One of the Coalition’s fiercest campaigners against the emissions trading scheme, agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce, has said the declining profitability of coal was a big factor in the fight against the $1.2bn Shenhua Watermark mine.
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Tony Abbott has admitted he will pay a personal price for failing to act sooner to remove his friend and ally Bronwyn Bishop amid the scandal over her expenses and said he would not make a “captain’s pick” to replace her.
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Tony Abbott rejected the notion that Bronwyn Bishop was offered any inducements to stand down from the Speaker’s job and he confirmed the next Speaker would be a matter for the party room.
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Bronwyn Bishop has told Liberal party members her chief of staff and spokesman, Damien Jones, who was linked to controversial travel allowance claims, would be a good candidate to take over the electorate.
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The Labor frontbencher and former ALP national secretary Gary Gray rejected a push for an Icac-style national integrity commission at the party’s conference because he says existing federal bodies are working.
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Labor MPs and senators will maintain a conscience vote for two terms of parliament on the issue of same-sex marriage before they are bound to vote in favour of it – after a last-minute deal between Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek at the party’s national conference.
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A Labor resolution to maintain a conscience vote on same-sex marriage before the next election and a binding vote after the election hangs in the balance as the party struggles over the best strategy to achieve marriage equality.
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Bill Shorten has won the freedom to use boat turnbacks as part of Labor’s asylum seeker policy but lost the support of three of his most senior colleagues, who voted with the left against turnbacks.
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Bill Shorten declared he would not shirk hard decisions as he argued for Labor to use boat turnbacks in an asylum seeker policy which would double humanitarian places, establish an independent child’s advocate and restore the refugee review tribunal.
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Bill Shorten is set to prevail in the show-stopping debate of the 47th national conference after gaining critical support from left-aligned unions on boat turnbacks.
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Bill Shorten has committed to working towards an Australian republic within the decade and declared that half of Labor MPs will be women by 2025.
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Labor has committed to remove investor state dispute settlement (ISDS) clauses from existing trade agreements, including the Chinese and Korean free trade agreements (FTA) recently signed by the Abbott government.
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Senior frontbencher and leadership rival Anthony Albanese has criticised Bill Shorten’s last minute conversion to boat turnbacks ahead of the Labor party conference, warning the party against an appeal to the “darker side”.
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Labor frontbencher Stephen Conroy, an influential rightwing powerbroker, has predicted Bill Shorten will win support at the party’s national conference to turn back asylum seeker boats despite anger in Labor’s left and sections of the right over the policy backflip.
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Bill Shorten is pushing to adopt the Abbott government’s policy of turning back asylum seeker boats at the party’s conference this weekend, in effect daring the left to take on his leadership.
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Key Labor policy positions on boat turnbacks, the China free trade agreement and party democratisation hang in the balance ahead of the party’s conference this weekend, with factional numbers closer than at any time in the past 20 years.
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Some of Labor’s most senior figures, including Gareth Evans, Carmen Lawrence, Barry Jones and Neal Blewett, have signed a petition to introduce democratic reforms to loosen the grip of factions and the trade union movement on party positions.
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Uncertainty around the Shenhua Watermark mega-mine’s effect on underground water creates “huge risks” and “is always open to creating irreversible impacts”, according to a former member of the Independent Expert Scientific Committee (IESC).
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Bronwyn Bishop will be “defiantly contesting” the next election in her seat of Mackellar, according to her spokesman, as the Tony Abbott declared the speaker was “on probation” over her expense claims.
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Tony Abbott has declared Speaker Bronwyn Bishop “on probation” over her decision to charge taxpayers $5,227 to charter a helicopter to take her to a Liberal party fundraiser.
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It has been more than a week since the environment minister, Greg Hunt, agreed to give the tick of approval to the $1.2bn Shenhua open-cut coalmine in the heart of Barnaby Joyce’s New England electorate.
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When Barnaby Joyce spoke about his agriculture white paper at the National Press Club this week, he outlined his childhood on the family farm. Mum did the books, cooked and cleaned, while the rest of the family chased sheep, drenching, mustering and shearing. Bank loans were for new properties, not new cars. A sheep was killed every Friday to supply the meat, supplemented by a vegetable garden on the creek. The main social outing was Mass on Sunday at Walcha, with the large Joyce family delivered in a Toyota tray back ute and a Ford.
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Barnaby Joyce has accused state governments and mining companies of being “far too greedy” on coal seam gas exploration and getting it wrong.
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A proposal to suspend some citizenship rights of sole Australian nationals could effectively introduce a “new form of conditional citizenship” and would face legal problems, constitutional law expert George Williams has said.
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Sophie Mirabella has won preselection in her old seat of Indi on a vote of 126 to 66, giving her the right to run against the sitting MP, independent Cathy McGowan in the next election.
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Malcolm Turnbull says the US supreme court decision that made same-sex marriage legal across the US will add to the momentum for marriage equality in Australia but Tony Abbott remains unmoved by the decision.
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Malcolm Turnbull has foreshadowed formal recommendations for policy changes at the ABC as a result of the government’s investigation into Q&A and has renewed his attack on the national broadcaster, accusing it of “undergraduate ... tabloid journalism”.
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The New South Wales premier, Mike Baird, is constantly showing his friend and colleague Tony Abbott a more inclusive way to run a Liberal government. If only the prime minister would listen.
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The New South Wales premier, Mike Baird, has outlined the most generous travel concessions to asylum seekers of any state government, declaring there is little point in having a strong economy unless it is used to help the vulnerable.
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Opposition trade spokeswoman Penny Wong has urged the Labor movement to reject the “false panacea” of protectionism and support free trade agreements signed off by the Abbott government.
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Tony Abbott has refused to change his language on Islamic State, which critics say promotes its propaganda, as he stepped up a national security campaign by visiting the site where terrorism suspect Numan Haider was shot dead.
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The leak of new information on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) shows the mega-trade deal could provide more ways for multinational corporations to influence Australia’s control of its pharmaceutical regulations.
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The leader of the National party in the Senate, Nigel Scullion, National MP Kevin Hogan and the Motoring Enthusiast senator, Ricky Muir, are the latest parliamentarians to reveal their support for marriage reform.
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Tony Abbott has described his own “mortgage stress” to defend the treasurer Joe Hockey, as Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens described parts of the Sydney housing market as “crazy”.
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Tony Abbott’s promised debate on a conscience vote on same-sex marriage could be undertaken in the Liberal-National joint party room, making any vote more likely to fail and thereby blocking the only chance of marriage reform in this parliament.
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The social services minister, Scott Morrison, has called for more time to consult migrant communities on same-sex marriage, warning that he hopes the issue “wouldn’t be a thing which tears the country apart”.
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A foreign investor from the UK could be the second person forced to divest an Australian residential property following the Abbott government’s crackdown on home ownership rules in May.
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A Muslim community leader has accused Tony Abbott of using the citizenship discussion like the “reds under the bed” communist debate of the 1950s in order to win the next election.
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“I hope you don’t mind”, said the woman behind the Palace Hotel counter when we booked in for dinner. “We have some drag queens coming to dinner. I hope you won’t be offended.”
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Low-income families will be the biggest losers from the Abbott government’s latest budget, according to modelling by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (Natsem) at the University of Canberra.
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A referendum on marriage equality would amount to a “big opinion poll” as parliament would still need to create laws to enable same-sex partners to marry, according to a constitutional expert.
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Tony Abbott has foreshadowed new measures to crack down on foreign fighters, releasing a video message promising the government would do “everything in our power to protect our people and to stop radicalised and brutalised people from roaming our streets”.
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Employers have an obligation to rearrange benefits if employees stand to lose out from changes to paid parental leave, a leading employer group has said, even if Joe Hockey described such arrangements as a “scam”.
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Joe Hockey has characterised employers who change their parental leave schemes to ensure workers maintain the same level of benefits as trying to “scam” the government and the taxpayer.
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See link for more details...
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The Abbott government is struggling to defend its new parental leave policy after the assistant treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, confirmed his family accessed both an employer scheme and the commonwealth scheme – a legitimate practice that ministers have referred to as “double dipping”.
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Malcolm Turnbull has distanced himself from other government ministers’ rhetoric on parental leave, saying mothers were entitled to receive whatever parental leave was available.
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Liberal senator Arthur Sinodinos warned it was “not a good look to be having a go at the young mothers” over paid parental leave after a fiery parliamentary debate over whether senior ministers called new mothers “rorters” and “fraudsters”.
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The value of farms and trusts will no longer be counted in assessments of eligibility for youth allowance, meaning more dependent students who live away from home could qualify for the payment which is worth up to $426.80 a fortnight.
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Farmers have won generous tax discounts for drought preparedness while rural communities will benefit from an Australia-wide electorate-based funding program called “stronger communities” under changes announced in the budget.
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Australia is to become the third country in the world to enter into new transfer pricing documentation standards to crack down on multinational tax avoidance.
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Working holidaymakers and fly-in-fly-out workers are among the surprise losers of the 2015 budget.
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Small business will be able to claim immediate tax deductions for individual items up to $20,000 until 2017, creating a short-term bonanza for businesses with a turnover of less than $2m.
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Treasurer Joe Hockey has revealed the deficit will beat his own December forecast as well as “market expectations” to come in below $40bn.
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On Anzac Day, an 18-year-old girl died at a party. She was the same age as my daughter and had the same surname. Two country girls. Parallel lives. It hit home.
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Medicare co-payments plans – modified and sidelined before finally being scrapped
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Julie Bishop has defended her appointment of the Danish climate contrarian Bjørn Lomborg to her foreign aid innovation group, saying she wants people who can “think outside the square” and challenge the status quo.
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Farmers are considering legal action over the approvals process for the $1.2bn Chinese state-owned Shenhua mega-mine as the federal government prepares to announce whether the project has passed its final hurdle under the water trigger legislation.
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The next time you hear the weather report, it may be accompanied by a short message from your meteorologist about the Abbott government’s thus far unsuccessful wage bargaining with the Australian public service.
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The head of the Business Council of Australia, Catherine Livingstone, has called for politicians to restore confidence in government process and chastised leaders for claiming election mandates for “disruptive policy reversals”.
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Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop have used strong diplomatic retaliation, withdrawing Australia’s ambassador to Indonesia, but rhetorical restraint to express their anger at the “cruel and unnecessary” executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.
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Adelaide-born musician, vegan and Peta activist, Jona Weinhofen should stick to his day job, guitarist in metalcore band I Killed the Prom Queen.
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Barnaby Joyce has defended the Coalition’s agricultural white paper against charges that it is full of “crackpot ideas”, saying the delay in releasing the policy document was due to its formidable content.
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Mike Baird has expressed a hope to work with Labor on reforms to clean up political donations – which forced 10 Liberal MPs to stand aside or resign after evidence from the Independent Commission Against Corruption.
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The Nationals are clawing back votes in the seat of Lismore as prepoll and postal votes are moving away from the Greens but the party remains in on track to win Ballina, Newtown and Balmain.
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Victorian Labor has taken steps to expel Martin Ferguson for disloyalty to the party during the NSW state election.
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The polls predicted a decisive win for Mike Baird’s Coalition government and that is what the voters delivered – a stunning victory to a premier who was prepared to sacrifice his popularity for a big ticket reform of privatisation.
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New South Wales has entered the twilight zone, the last 72 hours before the voters go to the polls. This is when the nerves kick in.
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A delegation of farmers has called for the Abbott government to act on climate change by restoring an emissions trading scheme, maintaining the current renewable energy target and spending on rail infrastructure to improve inland transport and reduce carbon emissions.
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The Baird government is inching ahead of Labor in the New South Wales election race according to Lonergan polling from last weekend, with the Greens and others making slight ground at Labor’s expense.
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If there is one remarkable dynamic in this as yet predictable NSW election campaign, it is the fight over National party turf.
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Luke Foley has accused the Baird government of being less open than the Chinese Communist party, after it was revealed the New South Wales treasurer had met officials from Chinese power company State Grid Corporation over the sale of the NSW electricity network.
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The result of the NSW election this Saturday is likely to be challenged after a security flaw was identified that could potentially have compromised 66,000 electronic votes.
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With the NSW election just a week away, conventional political wisdom says the performance of Tony Abbott’s government combined with the loss of two first-term Coalition governments means the electorate has become more volatile.
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The New South Wales premier, Mike Baird, will face an upper house inquiry into allegations his government attempted to revise a UBS report which concluded that his plan to lease electricity infrastructure would be detrimental to the state budget in the longer term.
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The New South Wales government has promised $100m towards protection of the state’s 970 threatened plants and animals facing extinction as the state election looms.
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It has been a long time since the major parties have fought to prove their green credentials in Australian politics.
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The Coalition under the New South Wales premier, Mike Baird, retains a commanding lead over Luke Foley’s Labor even though 43% of voters reported they were less likely to vote Liberal in the state election on 28 March due to the recent performance of Tony Abbott.
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The Greens will preference the Labor party in a large number of seats in the New South Wales election, Greens upper house member John Kaye has said.
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Fatigue with the federal government has led to low numbers of Liberal campaign volunteers prepared to knock on doors, staff booths and hand out leaflets for the party before the 28 March New South Wales election campaign.
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It is a distraction in itself that when watching a New South Wales leaders debate, both the NSW premier, Mike Baird, and his opposition, Luke Foley, are good performers – unlike their federal counterparts.
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The New South Wales Nationals education minister, Adrian Piccoli, has used his support of Julia Gillard’s Gonski funding reforms in state election advertising material and has called on the federal Coalition to restore education funding cut in the last budget.
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Car racing on the Sydney Harbour Bridge combined with Melbourne bashing. What better way to focus the eyes of NSW voters than to announce the state will try to steal the Formula One Grand Prix from Melbourne – one the eve of the 2015 race.
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The No Land Tax party, the Outdoor Recreation Party and the Animal Justice Party have secured the top three positions for groups on the NSW upper house ballot paper.
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The New South Wales state election is upon us and before you groan with boredom at the thought of what lies ahead, think again.
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Farmers who undertake good environmental management could be rewarded with lower interest rates under a policy being considered by Australia’s biggest rural lender, the National Australia Bank.
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The chief of Shenhua Australia has questioned the Coalition government’s pre-election promise for “one stop shop” environmental approvals after the environment minister Greg Hunt sent its Watermark coal mine plan for a second review by an expert scientific committee.
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Australia’s Pacific free-trade deal could stand in the way of clear country-of-origin labelling being considered by the Abbott government in the wake of the hepatitis A outbreak linked to imported frozen berries.
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The chairman of the Chinese state-owned Shenhua Australia company has criticised government delay to its plans for a $1.2bn open-cut coalmine on a site near some of Australia’s best agricultural land on the edge of the Liverpool Plains.
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All frozen berries imported by Patties – the parent company of Nanna’s and Creative Gourmet – are being screened as an interim measure while the disease risk is being reviewed by food regulatory authorities.
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The federal government is co-ordinating a national response to the hepatitis A outbreak linked to frozen berries as the health department braces for more cases due to an incubation period of up to seven weeks.
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The federal government says it remains committed to all health savings flowing into the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) as health minister Sussan Ley continues to negotiate with doctors over the Medicare co-payment.
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Tony Abbott has rejected a complete crackdown on food testing and labelling in response to the hepatitis A outbreak from imported berries, saying it was the responsibility of business “not to poison their customers”.
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The hardest thing Malcolm Turnbull had to do on the ABC’s Q&A was to resist smiling too much.
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Tony Abbott’s newly appointed whip Andrew Nikolic believes Australians taking part in terrorism must be stigmatised within their communites and “wherever possible” ejected from the country.
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Senior Liberals have distanced themselves from Tony Abbott’s decision to dump chief whip Philip Ruddock, who the prime minister has blamed for failing to keep him aware of backbench concerns about his leadership.
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The Australian Council of Trade Unions will lodge a claim with the Fair Work Commission to give workers the right to return to work on reduced or part-time hours after parental leave.
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Tony Abbott has said Australians have been “played for mugs” by “bad people” and the government would no longer give “the benefit of doubt” when it comes to immigration, residency, welfare and citizenship.
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Tony Abbott has revealed his thinking on the knighting of Prince Philip, saying it was not a question of whether “the public would like” the decision to award Australia’s top honour to the Queen’s husband.
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If ever there was a rockstar farmer, it has to be American Joel Salatin.
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The Palmer United party senator Dio Wang has called on the New South Wales premier, Mike Baird, to overturn the approval of the $1.2bn Shenhua Watermark open-cut coalmine on the Liverpool Plains and compensate the Chinese state-owned company to walk away.
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The position of two crucial crossbenchers has hardened against the Coalition’s deregulation of higher education after they were invited to a forum by two regional universities and the independent MP for Indi, Cathy McGowan.
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The Coalition backbench appears determined to force a leadership showdown, with two MPs openly calling for a vote and others claiming that a third of the party room are already behind a change of prime minister.
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The industry minister, Ian Macfarlane, has called on Liberal party’s deputy leader, Julie Bishop, to give assurances she will not challenge Tony Abbott’s leadership.
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Scott Morrison, one of three potential candidates to replace Tony Abbott, says he has no interest in becoming leader of the Coalition, but did not deny he had been approached.
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Farmers, community groups and former independent MP Tony Windsor have warned there will be a significant electoral backlash against the National party if the $1.2bn Shenhua Watermark mine project goes ahead on the so-called “food bowl” of the Liverpool Plains in northern New South Wales.
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Tony Abbott has attempted to shrug off continuing leadership speculation, describing himself as a “good captain”, and defending his chief of staff, Peta Credlin, from attacks by Rupert Murdoch.
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Conservative voters are cranky and demoralised. Which in turn makes Liberal and National party members cranky and demoralised. And that makes the conservative media cranky and demoralised.
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Although many 2014 budget measures are yet to be passed, the 2015 budget is already in train and the Australian Council of Social Service (Acoss) has delivered a submission calling for a fairer and less divisive budget than the last.
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The federal education minister, Christopher Pyne, has set a March deadline to push the higher education deregulation package through the Senate, warning crossbench senators he would not “adulterate” the reforms until they were “meaningless”.
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Well, that was awkward.
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Tony Abbott has tried to stem the tide of discontent within his own party ranks, defending his decision to award a knighthood to Prince Philip and saying the government is “strong and effective” under his leadership.
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Coalition MPs are trailing in eight of 11 marginal seats held by the government, new polling shows, with swing voters turned off by the government’s two key budget policies of a Medicare co-payment and university fees.
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The finance minister, Mathias Cormann, has rejected suggestions Tony Abbott’s leadership is under pressure after his decision to award a knighthood to Prince Philip, saying the prime minister had strong support in the party room.
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Tony Abbott has acknowledged unhappiness within his ranks, saying he has had some pretty candid conversations with his colleagues over the break but dismissed social media criticism of his performance as “electronic graffiti”.
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Tony Abbott has defended his decision to recommend the appointment of Prince Philip as a knight of the Order of Australia and admitted he did not consult his colleagues on the announcement.
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It was the era of big hair and shoulder pads, the hit songs were sung by Madonna and Robert Palmer and Bob Hawke’s Labor government had just won its third term of government.
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The Hawke cabinet approved guidelines for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation to spy on Australians to gather foreign intelligence, newly released cabinet documents have revealed.
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The multifunction polis was portrayed as a cross between The Jetsons, Blade Runner and a nuclear-powered paradise, channelling foreign investment and technology into the Australian economy.
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Bob Hawke did not consult the cabinet before making his famous, tearful promise to allow Chinese students to stay in Australia after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
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If ever there was a case for the National party to get out of the Coalition, it was there in Heather Ewart’s excellent documentary A Country Road: The Nationals.
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It’s two months since Tony Abbott visited Arnhem Land and Denise Fincham is not happy.
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The National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples has written to Tony Abbott urging him to intervene to stop Western Australia and South Australia racially discriminating against Indigenous communities by closing them down.
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The government may be about to bypass parliament and push through the controversial Medicare co-payment scheme in a “sneaky backdoor move”, the opposition has claimed.
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The world’s largest trade union federation has joined Australian unions in calling on Tony Abbott and the other 11 government leaders to stop negotiations on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement.
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Liberal senator Bill Heffernan has called for transparency in negotiations over international trade deals including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the China Free Trade Agreement (FTA), saying Australians deserve to know the details.
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Australia and China are widely expected to announce a free trade agreement (FTA) in the next week on or before Monday, when the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, addresses parliament in Canberra.
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The Abbott government is refusing to join China’s new regional infrastructure investment bank until it changes its governance rules, echoing US concerns but leaving Australia on the outer in the Asia-Pacific.
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Liberal party members in Tony Abbott’s home state of New South Wales have called for an investigation into the merits of a federal independent commission against corruption and have acknowledged that, without reform, Liberal candidates will lose to independents.
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Former Liberal minister Jackie Kelly has referred to the Abbott government as “lying, lying, lying toads” for betraying western Sydney on the Badgerys Creek airport.
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Secret negotiations over the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement have apparently been breached by another leak of material which shows Australian consumers could pay more for cancer medicines and face criminal penalties for non-commercial copyright breaches.
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At least two Australian air strikes in Iraq have killed an unspecified number of Isis fighters, out of a total of 43 sorties by Australian Super Hornet jets, military chiefs said.
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Tony Abbott has urged Liberal party members to stay in the party and fight for reforms after the resignation of former Howard government minister Jackie Kelly over the NSW division’s failure to make changes in the wake of factional brawling and evidence at the Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac).
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Tony Abbott’s New South Wales party division is paralysed by a bruising fight over preselection reforms, with members in some of the safest Liberal seats refusing to volunteer at the upcoming state election campaign.
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The Coalition’s plans to deregulate university fees are unfair and would price tertiary education out of reach of rural and regional students, an independent school headmaster has told a Senate committee.
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The Northern Territory attorney general says his government is “compelled” to set up a public sex offenders register despite Tony Abbott rejecting the proposal, and a lack of evidence supporting its effectiveness.
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Deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek has urged Tony Abbott to use more sober language after his shirtfront threat to Vladimir Putin, so that Russia can see how seriously Australia regards the MH17 crash investigation.
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The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is “unlikely” to seek bilateral talks with Tony Abbott following his “shirtfront” comment and his office will wait for a “more diplomatic and pleasant occasion” to communicate with the Australian prime minister, according to the Kremlin.
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Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev has warned Tony Abbott that politicians need to “choose their words” carefully following the Australian prime minister’s promise to “shirtfront” Vladimir Putin.
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The “level of engagement” of Australian special forces troops heading to Iraq is still unclear after the new Iraqi foreign minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, was quoted as saying he was “absolutely against foreign military bases and the presence of foreign military forces”.
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Tony Abbott’s threat to “shirtfront” Vladimir Putin has been labelled as “immature” by a Russian embassy official, who pointed out while Abbott may be a fit cyclist, the Russian president was a judo champion.
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The Liberal backbencher and former army commander Andrew Nikolic has warned that Iran presents a potentially worse threat than Islamic State (Isis), one that may require an urgent military response.
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Tony Abbott says he will “shirtfront” Vladimir Putin over the downing of MH17, claiming his conversation with the Russian president at the G20 would be “the toughest conversation of all”.
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Tony Abbott has declared “coal is good for humanity” while opening a coalmine in Queensland.
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The Queensland Muslim community has called for a lower threshold for arrest and increased penalties for people convicted of hate crimes that can be linked to the introduction of national security legislation.
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Finance minister Mathias Cormann refused to rule out raising taxes to help pay for the $500m-a-year Iraq mission, as defence minister David Johnston acknowledged weakness in the Iraqi army and the growing Islamic State (Isis) forces could lead to “quite a long campaign”.
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For all the shouting over the Abbott government’s plan to amend section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, it is now clear that it was not necessary to change any law.
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Tony Abbott has warned Australia’s involvement in Iraq would be dangerous and “quite lengthy” after cabinet authorised Australian airstrikes in Iraq against the Islamic State (Isis) group.
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The prime minister and the Speaker’s office appear to be at odds over the burqa ban, after Tony Abbott said he had asked the Speaker to “rethink the decision” while the Speaker’s office suggested that they had received no request to overturn the ban on facial coverings.
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The Australian Electoral Commission is investigating allegations of electoral fraud in the Victorian federal marginal seat of Indi, which independent Cathy McGowan won unexpectedly from Liberal frontbencher Sophie Mirabella.
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Five days after he arrived, the caravan moved out of Yirrkala as Tony Abbott went back to Sydney. His ministers went back to their white cars and offices and Indigenous leaders returned to their homelands.
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Two hundred Australian special forces troops have arrived in the Middle East, as Tony Abbott cut short his trip to Arnhem Land to farewell air force personnel leaving on Thursday.
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Tony Abbott has rejected the advice of the Liberal’s first indigenous lower house member Ken Wyatt to hold a referendum to recognise indigenous Australians at the next election in 2016 – making a 2017 poll more likely.
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A bipartisan parliamentary committee and its Liberal Indigenous chairman, Ken Wyatt, have demanded the referendum to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders be held “at or before” the next election in 2016.
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Tony Abbott has raised the possibility of cutting short his promised week-long trip to Arnhem Land to engage with Indigenous people due to Australia’s developing involvement in conflict in Iraq – possibly breaking an election commitment.
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The US president has Camp David, the country retreat used to rejuvenate world leaders and negotiate peace accords.
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A timeframe for the recognition of Indigenous Australians in the constitution is expected to emerge by the end of the week, with any referendum most likely to take place after the next election following meetings between the prime minister and Aboriginal elders in Arnhem Land.
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The attorney general, George Brandis, has promised Muslim leaders a full public parliamentary committee inquiry into the second tranche of the counter-terrorism law proposals, to allay concerns the community is being targeted.
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Tony Abbott will hand back the 900-year-old bronze Hindu “dancing shiva” – taken from India without permission by cultural traffickers – during his trip to close a deal providing Australian uranium to India.
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See link for more details...
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Western Australia Senator Dio Wang has been writing a lot of letters, answering the many Chinese community groups who were horrified at his leader Clive Palmer’s comments.
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Tony Abbott and the head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, David Irvine, have underlined that the government counter-terrorism laws are not aimed at Islam after growing criticism within the Muslim community over the national debate.
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Christian and Jewish leaders have rallied to support the Muslim community, asking members of the Australian public to join them in a campaign called “We’ll love Muslims 100 years”.
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The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, has for the first time addressed claims relating to an investigation into alleged sexual assault, after Victorian police notified him that no charges would be laid.
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Tony Abbott has labelled some Muslim groups “petty” and “foolish” for boycotting his Melbourne meetings to discuss proposed laws that would increase intelligence agencies’ powers and resources to fight terrorism.
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Tony Abbott says the killing of US journalist James Foley shows terrorism could happen in countries such as Australia and underlines the need for renewed resources and powers to fight extremism.
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Labor could block key elements of the government’s counter-terrorism package, including the reversal of the onus of proof, expanding intelligence collection of metadata and tough penalties for people who disclose information on special intelligence operations.
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The last mare in Dead Horse Gap lies dying on a pure-white bed of snow. Her ears twitch as we approach, but she’s too weak to lift her head. Her rib bones are a scaffold now for her chocolate brown coat.
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See link for more details...
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See link for more details...
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Tony Abbott has condemned Clive Palmer’s comments referring to Chinese “mongrels”, describing them as destructive and counter-productive.
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A government grant program which paid for projects which allowed community groups to engage with alienated Muslims did not have its funding renewed in the June 2014 budget, it has emerged.
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Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser has called on the government to use a little known part of the Crimes Act which allows for Australians to be charged with treachery for fighting with overseas forces and attracts a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
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The immigration minister, Scott Morrison, has answered allegations, made in the Human Rights Commission inquiry last week, that the government had tried to cover up asylum-seeker childrens’ mental health statistics, saying there always had been two versions of meetings.
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Government ministers have denied reports that Tony Abbott’s $5.5bn paid parental leave (PPL) scheme has been shelved, saying the budget would take precedence.
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Fifty Australian federal police have been deployed to London, ready to go into Ukraine if agreement is secured to send in an international team to secure the crash site for the investigation of flight MH17.
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The crash site of MH17 remains under the control of Russian-backed separatists and negotiations for access for international investigators are under way, the Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, has said.
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Tony Abbott’s pitch for building the roads of the 21st century has come under pressure from a leaked report for Infrastructure Australia. It claims the country has a “gambler’s addition to roads” and describes road spending as “hideously inefficient”.
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The governor general, Peter Cosgrove, has been sent to the Netherlands to receive the aircraft carrying the remains of the victims of the flight MH17 crash as reports emerged there may not be as many of the bodies recovered as first reported by separatists.
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A condolence book ceremony usually focuses on dignitaries, but in the public hall of the federal parliament on Tuesday the tragedy of the MH17 air disaster was best reflected in the faces of the schoolchildren watching.
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Tony Abbott has labelled interference at the MH17 crash site in Ukraine a “cover-up”, describing it as “evidence-tampering on an industrial scale”.
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The Australian and Dutch foreign ministers stood together to declare their joint objective “to bring our people home” after Australia’s resolution to the UN security council for a full investigation into the MH17 crash was passed unanimously.
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The government could pay child support to single parents regardless of whether the other parent pays, under a proposal being considered by a parliamentary inquiry – potentially adding more than $1bn to the budget if the debts are not recovered.
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Tony Abbott has warned Australia would take it “very badly” if Russia vetoed its United Nations Security Council resolution for full “unfettered” access by international investigators to the MH17 crash site as he described the mood of international leaders as “firmer and sterner”.
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Tony Abbott has insisted he will not just accept Vladimir Putin’s assurances of support for Australia’s call for a full and open investigation but will “hold him to his word”.
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Tony Abbott has expressed fears that Russia would “say the right thing” while allowing interference in the crash site of MH17 and interference with the “dignified treatment” of the 298 victims, including 36 Australian citizens and residents.
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A leading disability advocate says there is nothing in a KPMG review of the National Disability Insurance Scheme that would justify a delay in its rollout.
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More than 50 councils around the country have passed a motion calling on the attorney general, George Brandis, to drop his proposal to water down section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.
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The carbon tax repeal looks set to pass the new senate after July 7 but the prime minister declared he would take nothing for granted.
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The corporate regulator has called on the financial planning industry to work to restore consumers’ trust as the government played down the prospect of a royal commission into misconduct at Commonwealth Bank.
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The government has called on the Commonwealth Bank to provide a "proper response" to allegations of misconduct by financial planners, but played down the prospects of a royal commission.
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When veteran Queensland National party senator Ron Boswell rose to give his valedictory speech, he evoked Liberal party founder Robert Menzies to put the steel in the spine of his colleagues.
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Federal Labor is preparing to establish a “country caucus” that would meet separately before the main caucus and could use its numbers to ensure policy takes regional and rural Australia into account.
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Vivien Thomson may look more at home in the Nationals but she may well be one of the new faces of Labor.
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Oxley shire hall, 10 minutes out of Wangaratta, Victoria, is like many country town halls. Thousands of scones, slices and first kisses would have been served up here, with its small stage, simple kitchen and dunnies in the back shed.
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The agriculture minister, Barnaby Joyce, has criticised Australian supermarket giant Woolworths for charging growers to fund a marketing campaign with British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.
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Australia could be hit with trade sanctions over the Abbott’s government’s decision to stop calling East Jerusalem “occupied”, a term used in United Nations resolutions and supported in votes by the Australian government.
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A flight attendant broke her leg as two pilots on a Virgin Australia flight from Canberra to Sydney were controlling the plane in “opposite directions”, an Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) preliminary investigation has found.
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At a time when voters everywhere are hankering for some authenticity in politics, there is an interesting social experiment going on just out of Wangaratta this weekend that could put the grunt back into country politics.
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As Tony Abbott’s paid parental scheme came under sustained attack from all sides, a tax expert suggested small businesses, including family businesses, could raise incomes to employees before they were pregnant to increase paid parental leave (PPL) payments.
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The government is split on Tony Abbott’s signature paid parental leave (PPL) scheme, as three National senators committed to vote against the scheme, while Joe Hockey issued a strong warning to senators planning on blocking parts of the budget.
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Treasury officials have acknowledged that business bosses might be able to get around the Coalition’s budget repair levy by leaving money in their companies for three years rather than drawing it out as their wages.
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Many Landcare groups across the country are likely to disband and the future of the agriculture minister’s advisory group, the Australian Landcare Council, is in doubt as a result of budget cuts.
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In my life, there are two paces.
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The Greens will block the Medicare co-payment, Newstart changes for young people and the deregulation of university fees, all contained in a budget which “condemns us all to a dog-eat-dog existence in a rust-bucket economy”, Christine Milne said in her budget reply.
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Savage budget cuts will make it harder for science to develop products and processes for the market and will hamper Australia’s transition to a “smart economy”, according to the research industry.
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The paid parental leave scheme has not been detailed in the 2014 budget because the federal government is negotiating with the states on the details, Joe Hockey said.
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Our population is ageing – that much we know – so it was only fitting that post-budget debate was taken over by two senior Australians.
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Seniors groups will campaign in marginal seats at the next federal election against indexation changes to the pension and other cost-of-living issues such as the Medicare co-payments.
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Premiers have reacted angrily to the Abbott government’s decision to claw back $80bn in expected hospital and school funding over the next decade, accusing the commonwealth of outsourcing its budget problems to the states.
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Motorists will see petrol prices rise by an estimated 4 cents a litre to raise $2.2bn over four years.
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People with an annual income of more than $180,000 will pay a temporary budget repair tax to raise $3.1bn over the next three years.
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Sole parents, single parents and parents of disabled children will be hardest hit under changes to family tax benefits, designed to save money and get primary carers back to work.
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Labor’s Mark Dreyfus has launched an attack on the attorney general, George Brandis, over his conspicuous campaigns on changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, his challenge to the ACT’s same-sex marriage laws and his handling of the East Timor spying allegations.
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There is a local farmer who names his paddocks after countries. No doubt, it is appealing to think you could spend the morning in Brazil and the afternoon in Italy.
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The government has tied itself into a knot in the leadup to this budget, perhaps because at the Coalition’s heart lies a contradiction which is hard to fix.
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States and territories and the federal government have committed to the full rollout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, one day after the Commission of Audit recommended it be slowed down to save money.
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The government will apply tougher tests to family tax benefits but will not follow the Commission of Audit’s recommendation to abolish Family Tax Benefit B.
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The two largest Liberal state governments have opposed the weakening of the Racial Discrimination Act in a joint statement as they met with Tony Abbott for the Council of Australian Governments in Canberra.
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University students would pay a greater proportion of education costs and start repaying their student loans at a lower income threshold under recommendations by the audit commission.
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The commission recommends the privatisation of ten major entities, including Australia Post, the Australian Mint, Snowy Hydro and the Australian Submarine Corporation. It also proposes that a raft of agencies be abolished, merged and reworked.
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The government should abolish low interest loans for farmers except in the case of drought relief and should pare back disaster relief payments, according to the Commission of Audit.
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Patients would be charged a $15 co-payment for the first 15 visits to the doctor they make each year, and then $7.50 for each subsequent visit, under recommendations from the audit commission.
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Aged pensions should be more tightly means tested, including the family home in some cases, the eligibility age should be linked to life expectancy and new indexation should be implemented to ensure it rises more slowly, according to recommendations in the Commission of Audit.
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Disability assessments will be tightened and tougher eligibility and means testing should be imposed on carers, according to the Commission of Audit, while the National Disability Insurance Scheme should be slowed down to control the cost of the scheme.
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The Liberal party federal director, Brian Loughnane, has offered “business observers” a breakfast with the prime minister, Tony Abbott, and access to his ministers’ chiefs of staff for $11,000, at the same time as New South Wales Liberal party members face scrutiny in the Independent Commission Against Corruption over influence peddling.
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The Uniting church says racism is a “sin” and has joined ethnic communities and the New South Wales Bar Association in calling on the Abbott government to drop its proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act.
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The Abbott government is considering a measure that would prompt another vicious backlash to its May budget: cutting back fuel tax rebates for miners and farmers and other agricultural businesses that are worth more than $3bn a year.
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Queensland agriculture minister John McVeigh has criticised his federal counterpart Barnaby Joyce for the delay in the rollout of the $280m drought concessional loan package while 79% of his state remains in drought.
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More than 20 local councils across New South Wales and Victoria have passed or are preparing to pass a motion demanding the attorney general, George Brandis, withdraw his changes to the Racial Discrimination Act in a widening local campaign against the repeal of 18C.
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The “debt levy” being considered by the Abbott government faces likely defeat in the Senate if the government does include it in the 13 May budget.
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Independents including Cathy McGowan, Tony Windsor and Andrew Wilkie have reported a surge in interest in running community campaigns to challenge major party politics.
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Forget philosophy. New South Wales politics is not about Labor and Liberal. It’s not about left and right. It is about power. And when you have power in the premier state, the flies gather.
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Badgerys Creek will be the site for a second airport in Sydney, with work expected to begin in 2016, the prime minister has announced.
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The assets test for the aged pension should be tightened and the superannuation access age should be increased to 65 to bring policy in line with life expectancy and prevent double dipping, according to the head of the Financial Services Council, John Brogden.
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The longest-serving independent senator in Australian history, Brian Harradine, has died aged 79 after a long illness.
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Pensioner and religious groups have supported a bill to ban investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) clauses in international trade and investment agreements, raising concerns including higher medicine prices and loss of Australian sovereignty.
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The government should remove enrolment targets for university students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and remove the cap on student fees, a report says.
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Joe Hockey has called for “a mature debate” on raising the retirement age to 70 and for a discussion about aged-pension asset rules while defending the paid parental leave scheme promised by the prime minister, Tony Abbott.
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Christine Milne has called for a complete overhaul of the Greens' constitution to focus on winning more federal seats.
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For Christine Milne, a farmer’s daughter, the rural community has proven a tough nut to crack.
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There is a strange political alliance building in this country, one that governments and major parties will do well to consider.
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Tony Abbott is facing a plethora of demands in return for the votes he needs to repeal the carbon and mining taxes as trading begins to secure crossbench support for government policies opposed by Labor and the Greens.
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A Liberal member behind a push to reform the New South Wales Liberal party has urged the federal machine to intervene in the state branch following the appearance of the assistant treasurer, Arthur Sinodinos, at the Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac).
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For 30 years, the political stage has been awaiting the appearance of Arthur Sinodinos – the great hope of the Liberal party and a future treasurer.
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The Greens leader, Christine Milne, has asked Australians to “trust their gut instinct” on Tony Abbott ahead of the WA Senate election, while predicting the tide has turned on the progressive vote.
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Bishop George Browning has written to Bill Shorten calling on him to clarify Labor policy on Israeli settlements in the West Bank after the opposition leader suggested to the Zionist Federation that only “some settlement activity” was illegal.
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Australia’s race discrimination commissioner Tim Soutphommasane has said he would allow for some clarification of the Racial Discrimination Act to make clear racial abuse is only unlawful if it causes “profound and serious effects”, as opposed to “mere slights”.
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Donations from the Jewish community to the Liberal party and physical support such as letterboxing could be affected by the government’s proposal to remove “offend, insult and humiliate” and broaden the exemptions in the Racial Discrimination Act, a prominent Jewish leader has warned.
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Every so often, issues arise on the political landscape that offer a window into political representatives who are most deeply touched by them. Race is always one of them. It inspires a passion unseen on most other subjects.
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It was no surprise when the Labor motion finally came to debate no confidence in speaker Bronwyn Bishop, and she was ready for it.
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Labor has attempted the first vote of no confidence in a parliamentary Speaker since 1949, declaring Bronwyn Bishop biased, incompetent and failing in her interpretation of the standing orders.
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The attorney general, George Brandis, is under pressure to back down on changes to the Racial Discrimination Act as he came under fire from the New South Wales premier and it became clear he was forced to water down the proposal by his cabinet colleagues.
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The head of the prime minister's Indigenous advisory council, Warren Mundine, has suggested the government’s proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act will “let people off the chain in regard to bigotry”.
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When the Liberal party’s grande dame Bronwyn Bishop was elected speaker, she described it as the capping of her career and promised to act impartially.
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The federal government is planning a major revision of the Racial Discrimination Act, removing the provisions that make it an offence to “offend, insult and humiliate”, while introducing an offence of “vilification” on the grounds of race, and widening the exemptions for public debate.
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As the drought bites in Queensland and northern NSW for its second year, Australian farmers hold $3.21bn in farm management deposits (FMDs), designed to draw on during tough financial years caused by seasonal fluctuations.
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Protecting people from prejudice and hate speech is part of the Australian citizenship contract, according to Bill Shorten, who strongly rebuffed comments by the attorney general, George Brandis, that “people have a right to be bigots”.
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The employment minister, Eric Abetz, has rejected claims that his advisers urged his department to “massage” jobs figures to ensure Tony Abbott’s key election promise of creating one million jobs over five years was on track.
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The attorney general, George Brandis, has declared “people have the right to be bigots” as he confirmed plans to remove sections of the Racial Discrimination Act while ensuring the laws were better able to deal with incitement to racial hatred.
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As every local councillor knows, people may feel powerless about influencing national politics but muck about with the main street and everyone has a view.
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Aesop may have been enduringly kind to the tortoise and the mouse, but he did not do much for the reputation of the donkey.
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Tony Abbott is planning to tour drought-affected areas this weekend after calls for him to visit rural communities to understand the issues on the ground before cabinet consideration of assistance.
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The assistant health minister, Fiona Nash, says her chief of staff has “no conflict of interest” because he “receives no income” from a “shareholding” in his wife’s lobbying firm, which represents chocolate and soft drink makers, but the opposition says there has been a “serious breach” of standards.
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The assistant health minister’s chief of staff, Alastair Furnival, who intervened to pull down a healthy food rating website, has an interest in his wife’s lobbying firm, which acts for Cadbury’s parent company.
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There is a strong angel-devil narrative going on in the drought funding debate.
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A healthy food rating website approved by the state and federal ministerial forum and designed to help consumers interpret nutrition information on packaged food has been pulled down after intervention by the assistant health minister’s office.
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Australia’s last remaining carmaker, Toyota, has announced it will cease production in 2017 with the loss of 2,500 jobs.
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We all have a wishlist of worthy causes where the government could spend more money. But treasurer Joe Hockey has warned it is the end of the age of entitlement and everyone has to do the heavy lifting.
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Rural communities have called for Tony Abbott and the treasurer, Joe Hockey, to visit areas affected by severe weather conditions as the government decides on the drought package.
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The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has been roundly criticised by the Commonwealth auditor general and parliamentary members during the first day of a parliamentary inquiry into the loss of ballot papers in the Western Australia Senate election last year.
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Tony Abbott has flagged plans to bring forward a new farm household allowance to assist drought-affected farmers with dole-equivalent income support, but the government has yet to finalise a substantial package to help farm businesses with interest, feed or water.
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The ABC managing director, Mark Scott, has refused Tony Abbott’s calls for the national broadcaster to apologise for its handling of allegations made by asylum seekers against the Australian navy.
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A major business group has warned the Coalition government against wholesale budget cuts or tax rises in the leadup to the May budget.
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Barnaby Joyce is under pressure from National party colleagues to reinstate interest payment subsidies – which remain party policy – as part of any drought relief package the agriculture minister proposes for farmers.
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Former Liberal treasurer Peter Costello has been appointed chairman of the Future Fund after the resignation of businessman David Gonski to take up the chair of the ANZ Bank.
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The Coalition outspent the Labor party by $25m in the financial year leading up to the federal election, attracting large single donations from companies and individuals including Ros Packer, the paper giant Pratt Holdings and the investment company Washington H Soul Pattinson.
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There is no “exceptional circumstance” drought funding currently on offer for affected farmers apart from income support payments to put food on the table, contrary to comments by the treasurer, Joe Hockey.
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The Victorian premier, Denis Napthine, has committed to develop a “plan B” for food manufacturer SPC Ardmona after he attended crisis meetings with the company, fruitgrowers and the Shepparton council.
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In drawing a line in the sand on industry policy by rejecting a $25m one-off grant to SPC Ardmona, Tony Abbott may have set a precedent of another kind for country voting habits.
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There is a term that is not generally used in polite company in the bush. That term is climate change.
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Everyone has heard the dying country town story – younger people leaving and oldies getting older. Now there is evidence to suggest younger Australians are moving the other way. The big competition in country Australia right now is the battle for those new residents.
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After 20 years of trying to keep a vegetable garden, I have given up.
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Maturing at the same time as the Graincorp takeover, the Warrnambool cheese war may be seen through the prism of Australian versus foreign capital.
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When you wander onto a deserted beach where footprints have been erased by incoming tides, there is a temptation to think you are the only one who has ever stood in that place.
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Drought is hitting Australia’s eastern states as summer temperatures soar, increasing pressure on the federal government to help farmers struggling to make ends meet. In Queensland, 62% of the state is now drought declared.
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One morning this week I walked 22.5km. It was part of a personal fitness campaign that follows the fag end of Christmas and precedes a trekking holiday. Though I survived the walk, as the fingers hit the keyboard, it feels like my two legs will dislodge from my hips at any moment and splatter on the floor.
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When I was 12, I was put on a horse called Hobbit. His owner told me, kick to go, pull to stop, one rein each to turn. Simple as that.
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There is something revolutionary about Cathy McGowan.
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More than 15 years ago, an optic-fibre cable was laid from Sydney to Melbourne. It went through public and private land, up hill and down dale at a time when ordinary users and businesses were only starting to understand the potential of the great, rambling beast known as the internet.
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Tony Abbott is often noted as one of the most successful opposition leaders of all time, mostly for his work in the 43rd parliament. Now we know his inspirations.
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The Coalition government has massively revised its plan for the National Broadband Network, breaking a promise to complete the first stage by 2016, after a strategic review found cost blowouts and poor management.
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The Australian Navy has instituted a wide-ranging inquiry into naval culture and procedures following allegations of bastardisation on the HMAS Ballarat.
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Never look a gift horse in the mouth, so the saying goes, but for the modern politician a gift should be handled like a black snake. It can always come back to bite.
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Australia is prepared to give ground on investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) powers – which allow multinational companies to sue the government – in return for “substantial market access” in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the trade minister, Andrew Robb, said.
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The Indonesian government has asked cattle importers to stop buying Australian cattle until the two countries resolve their diplomatic problems caused by spying allegations.
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The former high court chief justice Gerard Brennan has prepared a damning assessment of a “whatever it takes” approach to politics, questioning the asylum-seeker policies of both parties.
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The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement is being negotiated in Singapore this week between Australia, New Zealand, the US, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Canada, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Japan. The countries have a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of US$28,136bn on 2012 figures, which represents almost 40% of the world’s GDP. Australian trade within the TPP countries represents A$214,224m.
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Leaked documents from the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations between Australia and its 10 Pacific neighbour nations suggest the US is using “high-pressure tactics” to get market access, as the Abbott government refused to release details ahead of signing the deal.
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Maggie Kate Minogue is one of our local heroes. She represents one example of the reality of education in a small country town and the best reason for a needs-based education funding model.
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The agriculture minister, Barnaby Joyce, has urged Australians to get involved in the agriculture white paper, including a tax debate on the banning of negative gearing of farm investments for “Pitt Street farmers”.
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The pinstripes are on the warpath. The treasurer, Joe Hockey, has blocked the $3.4bn sale of GrainCorp to Archer Daniels Midland.
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Renowned economist Ross Garnaut has called for a change in the political culture to address serious economic challenges facing the country, and says low income Australians cannot bear the brunt of reforms.
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Treasurer Joe Hockey has threatened “massive cuts” to government expenditure if Labor and the Greens block the government’s bid to raise Australia’s debt limit to $500bn.
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Tony Abbott says he has offered the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, a private briefing from the Treasury secretary, Martin Parkinson, on the state of the budget in order to win Labor support to increase the debt cap by $200m.
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Labor will attempt to stop the Coalition government raising Australia’s debt ceiling from $300bn to $500bn, calling for a compromise figure $400bn as politicians descended on Canberra for the opening of the 44th Parliament.
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Australians had already “crystallised a good idea of ourselves” and did not need redemption in the first world war, a conflict which was “devoid of virtue”, the former Labor prime minister, Paul Keating, said.
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Not many people off farm appreciate the agony and ecstasy most farmers go through at harvest time.
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When you paddle out on a board to catch a wave, there is a moment when you can feel the surge of the water, the momentum building underneath you, and you must commit to whatever comes next.
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So the bush is bleeding. No one wants to live here. Just a few of us hardy souls left, it appears.
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As the Blue Mountains burned last week, a grumble of local farmers gathered in Harden, on the south-west slopes of New South Wales. I met them in the middle of a wheat crop, hunched against the cold wind.
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When a horse smells a fire, her nostrils flare, she gets on her toes and trots around in a circle to assess where the danger is coming from.
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A long-time Liberal party member threatened with suspension has emailed 10,000 Liberal party members, criticising the party rule that stops members speaking out about "the extraordinary culture of rorts that dominate the New South Wales Liberal party".
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While Australians gave Tony Abbott’s conservative Coalition a resounding victory in the lower house, they were reluctant to give him absolute control of the Senate. For better or worse, mining magnate Clive Palmer is the most conspicuous beneficiary of their electoral wisdom.
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The Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, will miss his first face-to-face meeting since winning office with the US president, Barack Obama, who has cancelled his visit to the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Bali due to the US government shutdown.
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The Greens will appeal a decision by the Australian Electoral Commission not to recount the 1.3m Senate votes in Western Australia.
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The former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski has been confirmed as chairman of NBN Co, while only two of Labor's seven existing board members have been reappointed.
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The political consultant who helped micro party senators get elected said he believed the electoral process should be reformed, but rejected suggestions he had “gamed” the Senate system.
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In the wake of Tony Abbott’s first overseas visit, Indonesia has committed to increase imports of Australian cattle and boxed beef to meet rising demand.
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The Western Australia Greens candidate Scott Ludlam has formally requested a partial recount of votes after losing his bid to return to the Senate, with Palmer United party candidate Zhenja Wang taking his place.
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The Afghan soldier suspected of killing three Australian soldiers while on patrol has been apprehended in Pakistan and will be brought to trial in Afghanistan.
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The Afghan national army soldier accused of killing three Australian soldiers at a patrol base has been apprehended in Pakistan and will be brought to trial in Afghanistan.
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Former prime minister Julia Gillard defended her controversial changes which moved single parents off their pension and on to the unemployment benefit Newstart, but she accepted Newstart was “too low”.
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Tony Abbott has pledged to get Australia's beef trade with Indonesia back on track after Labor's decision to shut down live cattle exports, insisting that Indonesian abattoirs were "quite comparable" to those in Australia.
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Ricky Muir of the Australian Motoring Enthusiast party will enter the Senate on a primary vote of less than 1%, while the mining magnate Clive Palmer will face a recount in Fairfax after beating his Liberal National party opponent Ted O'Brien by just seven votes.
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With his apology to Indonesia on his first overseas visit, Tony Abbott has switched from opposition leader to prime minister, from wrecker to builder.
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Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, has explained the motivation behind her famous misogyny speech, saying it was the result of a “crack point” brought about by the now prime minister, Tony Abbott’s lecture on sexism.
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The acting Labor leader, Chris Bowen, has called the attorney general, George Brandis, "one of the biggest hypocrites" in parliament after the Liberal senator repaid $1,683 in taxpayer-funded entitlements for going to a friend's wedding.
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The Nationals are preparing to block a bid by one of the two women in their party for a leadership role in the Senate.
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20 December 2012: Tony Abbott
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Labor has condemned the Coalition as “petty and vindictive” after the incoming government revoked the appointment of former Labor premier Steve Bracks as New York consul general.
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The man likely to be a Victorian senator for the Australian Motoring Enthusiast party, Ricky Muir, has dismissed a video in which he and his brother have a kangaroo poo fight as "people play".
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Tony Abbott has not decided where he and his family will live after he is sworn in as the prime minister.
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The new Coalition government is likely to have six new crossbenchers in the Senate to deal with, along with the Democratic Labor party senator John Madigan in Victoria and South Australia's independent Nick Xenophon. Who are they and will they help or hinder as Tony Abbott attempts to get his agenda – particularly repeal of the carbon tax – through the upper house?
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A party whose name strongly resembles that of the Liberals and which found itself placed first on the New South Wales ballot paper seems likely to see its leader elected to the Senate after its vote share increased from 1.81% in 2010 to 8.87% this time.
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In typically bold style, Clive Palmer says Tony Abbott would not be prime minister without preferences from the Palmer United Party.
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Labor is expecting to hold all its seats in Queensland, including outgoing prime minister Kevin Rudd's electorate of Griffith and former treasurer Wayne Swan in Lilley.
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Kevin Rudd has conceded defeat in the Australian election and announced he is to stand down as Labor leader.
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A future National party leadership contender, Barnaby Joyce, has claimed victory in New England following the retirement of high-profile independent Tony Windsor.
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“Ah, the vultures on Vulture Street,” a protester yelled as the media covering Kevin Rudd arrived ahead of the prime minister to watch him vote early on Saturday afternoon – a classic election day ritual.
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Spike Milligan used to say he didn't mind dying, he just didn't want to be there when it happened.
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As any good herd animal knows, when the predators are circling it's best to seek the safety of your own mob. Sheep turn in and face their backsides out to danger.
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The Liberal party has rejected suggestions it has taken candidate Sophie Mirabella's image out of campaign posters in Indi, where the party is facing a strong challenge from rural independent Cathy McGowan.
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You may have noticed we have slipped into a post-election Australia in which Tony Abbott has already won and we are all arguing about what it means.
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The major parties are insisting the result of election is still close but the debate has moved on to the outcome in the Senate. At issue is Tony Abbott's threat that if he does not control the Senate and it blocks the abolition of the carbon tax, he will call a double dissolution election.
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Scott Morrison, the shadow immigration minister, defended Liberal candidate Fiona Scott on Tuesday over her claim that asylum seeker policy was a "hot topic" in her electorate because the traffic was crowded.
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The number of asylum seekers arriving in Australia fell by more than half in the last month since the announcement of the government's "PNG solution", with the immigration minister, Tony Burke, saying that for the first time that the numbers of asylum seekers arriving on Christmas Island was declining.
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Tony Abbott on Sunday:
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Labor has committed $12m to establish an Australian Universities Press and a permanent Book Industry Innovation Council to try to halt the downturn in domestic publishing, if it wins government.
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“Without families, we are nothing,” said Kevin Rudd of his wife, Therese Rein.
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Open warfare has broken out between the Liberal and the National parties with New South Wales National senator Fiona Nash joining her party leader, Warren Truss, in attacking the Liberal shadow treasurer, Joe Hockey, for being “disconnected” from regional Australia.
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A re-elected Labor government would force the states to maintain and increase their Tafe funding by threatening them with being bypassed by a federal government providing direct funding to institutions or setting up its own national vocational training network.
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Tony Abbott has admitted his full policy costings and savings will not be released until after the political advertising blackout, ensuring Labor cannot use attack ads targeting the policies in the final days of the campaign.
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So many quotes. So little time. Some questions faced by the Rudds on Thursday ...
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The issue of foreign investment has made an explosive entry to the election campaign, with the agriculture minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, left scrambling to clarify Labor's foreign investment policy after Kevin Rudd's surprise comments that he was "a bit anxious" about an "open slather" approach to foreign investment.
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Here's the thing about the final debate. Fake it 'til you make it just doesn't work in politics.
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Kevin Rudd on Tony Abbott's capability to deal with international issues:
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The Greens have called for a major overhaul of laws governing the private information the government is allowed to collect and share with other countries in the wake of the Edward Snowden case.
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Opposition leader Tony Abbott has attempted to justify his employment participation policy that pays long-term unemployed on Newstart and Youth Allowance bonuses of up to $15,500.
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Kevin Rudd has announced a future taskforce to investigate moving naval bases from Sydney to Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia to capitalise on the strategic advantages of Australia’s north.
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The power struggle between the Liberals and the Nationals is intensifying as the likelihood of a Coalition victory grows, with foreign investment the latest subject of disagreement.
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Tony Abbott used his Coalition campaign launch on Sunday to commit to university-style trade support loans of up to $20,000 for young apprentices, $200m for dementia research and the indexation of income thresholds on the commonwealth seniors’ health card.
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The political makeover is complete.
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The Greens have committed to a Senate inquiry into Australia's "cruel" treatment of refugees and clean air legislation as part of their election platform.
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If you have only been watching mainstream coverage of the 2013 election, you would be excused for thinking there was no campaign at all in the bush.
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The morning after the debate the night before …
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In his ever-so-brief second honeymoon period after his return to the leadership, Kevin Rudd framed the battle with Tony Abbott as the “nerdy glasses-wearing kid in the library” versus the Oxford boxing champion.
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Kevin Rudd was asked whether he was comfortable being on the same page as Gina Rinehart regarding the northern Australia policy, which promises to create a special taxation zone in 2018.
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The WikiLeaks party's number two Victoria Senate candidate, Leslie Cannold, has resigned amid a storm over the party's preferences, which favoured rightwing extremists ahead of the Greens.
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The former Speaker Peter Slipper says he has been using old Liberal posters with the party name chopped off in his election campaign, to do his bit for the environment.
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Labor has promised $15m to establish a network of nurse co-ordinators in rural and regional Australia to support more than 7000 cancer patients over the next four years.
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A Liberal party candidate who ran a website containing offensive material including references to domestic violence, incest and child abuse has resigned, leaving the seat of Charlton without a Liberal representative for the upcoming election.
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A music clip of politicians lip-syncing to a song called Round and Round may well be the best indicator of the tone of this election.
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Education minister Bill Shorten gave a short lecture at the National Press Club on Labor’s education reforms and one of this favourite maxims from the “Age of Entitlement ... ah the Age of Enlightenment ... ”
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Labor will commit to a $125m investment fund for health and medical research, focusing on regenerative medicine, if it wins the federal election next month.
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Tony Abbott bursting with pride about his star candidate for Lindsay, Fiona Scott, who had just answered a question about the five pillars of the Coalition policy:
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Liberal candidates in western Sydney appear to have been gagged and forced to have all media appearances approved by the party's New South Wales head office after Jaymes Diaz's disastrous interview, in which the candidate for Greenway failed to provide more than one point when asked about the Coalition's six-point plan to stop the boats.
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The Western Australian Greens senator Scott Ludlam described the WikiLeaks party's decision to preference the Greens below the Nationals as "extraordinarily disappointing" but said he did not regret supporting Julian Assange.
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Kevin Rudd has accused Tony Abbott of being evasive by pushing for the second leaders' debate to take place on pay-TV Sky News rather than on the prime minister's preferred options of the free-to-air networks Seven, Nine or Ten.
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Julian Assange's WikiLeaks party has blamed an "administrative error" for its preferences going to rightwing parties including Australia First and the Shooters and Fishers ahead of the Greens on its New South Wales Senate ticket.
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A Coalition government would pay mothers who give birth after July 2015 up to half of their annual salary under its paid parental leave scheme – while Labor has unveiled a plan to cut family benefits for parents who refuse to vaccinate their children.
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Families who do not vaccinate their children will lose a tax supplement of $726 because other parents are worried about whether their children are safe at school from diseases such as whooping cough and measles, according to the prime minister, Kevin Rudd.
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Matt-O-Matic @MattGlassDarkly on the Labor’s northern Australia policy.
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Former Speaker Peter Slipper will stand again in his Queensland electorate of Fisher, pitting the now-independent MP against his former Liberal colleague Mal Brough – who a court found had worked to undermine him.
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The Coalition has signalled it may keep Labor's savings measure of a 50% increase in the tobacco tax, owing to what Tony Abbott described as a "budget emergency".
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Kevin Rudd on his promise for new trade training centres.
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There were those who thought Tony Abbott’s prioritising of a candidate’s “sex appeal” were slightly inappropriate. Former Labor leader Mark Latham felt he got it all wrong.
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Tony Abbott has come under fire for describing gay marriage as "the fashion of the moment", while defending his opposition to legislating on the issue.
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Labor and the Coalition have both ruled out forming a government with minor parties and independents. So in the event of a hung parliament, there are only three options:
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Kevin Rudd has joined Tony Abbott in ruling out deals with Greens and independent candidates in the event of another hung parliament.
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Tony Abbott has made a “captain’s call” to preference Labor ahead of the Greens, making the job that much harder for the Greens’ only lower house member, Adam Bandt, to retain his seat of Melbourne.
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Labor is hoping to use social media and the digital world to build momentum for change on gay marriage and force Tony Abbott into allowing a conscience vote on the issue.
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Tony Abbott tried a compare and contrast former Lindsay candidate Jackie Kelly with current candidate Fiona Scott.
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Julian Assange's WikiLeaks party is investigating ways to harness international backers and mobilise support in the lead-up to the Australian election.
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Tony Abbott, trying to make the point that Labor was a Rudd-man band, whereas the Coalition was a united team: "No one, however smart, however well-educated, however well experienced, is the suppository of all wisdom."
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Millionaire adman John Singleton has weighed into the election campaign, bankrolling two sporting stars on a joint independent ticket called Team Central Coast in marginal NSW electorates to "keep the bastards honest".
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Analysis of Tony Abbott’s recent spike in Twitter followers showed accounts involved were definitely “dodgy” but the Liberal party was not necessarily behind the rise, according to an academic expert in social media.
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Tony Abbott believes in you. Kevin Rudd believes in gay marriage. The worms don't know who to believe in. The rest of Australia believes in no more election debates.
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The social media election campaign is heating up as Tony Abbott's office confirmed it is investigating a large spike in Twitter followers on Saturday night and has rejected suggestions that the party has purchased followers.
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Labor has opened nominations for just 24 hours to fill the vacancies in Hotham and Kennedy after the pre-selected candidates were dumped for inappropriate comments on the eve of the first leaders debate.
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The federal government is pressing ahead with a domestic campaign advertising its policy to send all boat arrivals to Papua New Guinea, in spite of the Coalition’s lack of support for the spending during the election period.
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For Julia Gillard – as for all leaders – the dogs barked for three years but the caravan finally moved on.
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Rural groups have given a mixed response to attempts by the Greens to reach out to local communities, citing policies taxing family trusts, opposition to intensive farming and a ban on live exports as ultimately undermining Australia’s food security.
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It was a bit like watching a divorced couple coming back together for the sake of a wedding.
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The Greens are planning to launch their food policy online as they attempt to reach out to rural voters ahead of the election.
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The prime minister, Kevin Rudd, and Peter Beattie declared they would put their differences aside for the sake of the Labor Party and the good of the country as the former Queensland premier announced his decision to run for the Brisbane seat of Forde.
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As far as election jokes go, it would not have been approved by Labor campaign headquarters.
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Asylum seekers in Indonesia who have paid people smugglers to get to Australia are asking for their money back since the PNG resettlement plan was announced, the immigration minister, Tony Burke, said.
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Fortescue Metals expressed its disappointment at the high court's unanimous decision to dismiss its challenge to the mining tax, describing the levy as "unfair, discriminatory and complex".
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The Community and Public Sector Union is refusing to campaign for the Labor party, in protest against the government’s plans to cut $1.8bn from across the public service.
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A limited number of asylum seekers will be allowed to “settle and reside” in Nauru under the Australian government’s new settlement deal with the Pacific Island nation, but they will not be able to apply for citizenship.
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