Humbled Albanese shifts gear as Jewish community's anger builds. This was a humbled prime minister, confronting three days of Jewish community anger. Standing alongside his ministers, the federal police commissioner and his antisemitism envoy, this was a prime minister showing contrition, some regret and an acknowledgement more could have been done. Not an apology, to be sure, but a greater show of fallibility than we have previously seen from Anthony Albanese, even after the Voice referendum defeat. With the Jewish community's anger showing no sign of easing, and powerfully channelled by John Howard and Josh Frydenberg, Albanese had to shift gear. Loading... PM makes clear he has heard the cry The prime ministerial reaction in the first few days after the Bondi terrorist atrocity wasn't enough.
Ultimately, though, the prime minister needed to let the nation know he had heard the loudest cry from the Jewish community — for more action to stamp out antisemitism. Defensively listing steps already taken was never going to cut it. Loading. The faces with a front-row seat to history. A sacked prime minister. A jostling crowd. And words that echoed through the years. Fifty years ago, to this day, the most dramatic event in Australia's political history played out: an elected prime minister was sacked at the direction of one man, the governor-general. As word spread of the dismissal, a crowd gathered on the steps of what’s now known as Old Parliament House in Canberra, creating a scene that has loomed large in the minds of Australians since. Microphones are pointed at Governor-General John Kerr's secretary David Smith as he reads a proclamation confirming the dismissal of the Whitlam government. Behind him looms the six-foot-four (1.93-metre-tall) former prime minister, Gough Whitlam, surrounded by dozens of onlookers.
The group behind Smith and Whitlam is a mixed bag: some whose work demanded they be there, and others galvanised by outrage or the promise of history in the making. There are journalists from 2GB, The Age, the ABC, The Canberra Times and The Bulletin. Credits. When Donald Trump was ready to take his pound of flesh, Kevin Rudd was here to help. From his humble early days as a child reading Hansard in the regional Sunshine State pocket of Eumundi, Kevin Rudd has been preparing for this martyrdom. But the Passion Of The Kevin, when it came, was a million miles from home. It came in the White House's Cabinet Room, lately and elaborately emblingened by the 47th US president with golden plate ware, golden cornicing and golden drapes.
This room is best known in the current Trump administration for its lengthy cabinet meetings in which departmental secretaries take turns to descant upon the president's greatness and wisdom while the man himself listens sternly, occasionally allowing himself an economical nod of agreement. It is very different from the Cabinet Room in Canberra, which has more of a native-timber vibe and in which Rudd, in his two short terms as prime minister, inflicted and absorbed injuries the extent of which we won't know till the 20-year Cabinet papers disclosure happens. Loading... I mean, it's possible. Loading. Trump tells Rudd 'I don't like you', reportedly offers forgiveness off-camera. Donald Trump has told Australia's ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, "I don't like you, and I probably never will" to his face. Mr Rudd was surrounded by journalists when he received the brutal remark while sitting across from Ausralian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Mr Trump in the White House Cabinet Room.
It was the first in-person meeting between Mr Albanese and Mr Trump. Trump's AUKUS remarks the 'words we have been looking for': SA premier — as it happened The prime minister and Australian ministers laughed off the exchange, but the federal opposition said it was "untenable" for Mr Rudd to continue as ambassador. His suitability for the role has been under a cloud since Mr Trump's election victory. Despite previously calling the former prime minister "not the brightest bulb", Mr Trump indicated he did not know Mr Rudd when he was asked by a journalist whether their relationship was behind the long delay to the president finally meeting Mr Albanese.
"You said bad? " Australia formally recognises state of Palestine as Anthony Albanese arrives in US. Australia has formally recognised Palestine as a sovereign state, becoming one of more than 150 countries to do so. The move was previewed in August but became official on Sunday in a joint statement by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong. Canada and the United Kingdom have also made formal announcements recognising a Palestinian state, and about seven other Western countries have signalled they are about to do the same. "This is the world saying that the cycle of violence has to stop," Mr Albanese said in New York, where he is leading an Australian delegation at the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly.
"Now is the time. "Australia is not [a] big player in the Middle East. "What we can do, though, is to use this statement in conjunction with other partners to make this declaration. " The declaration says Australia "recognises the legitimate and long-held aspirations of the people of Palestine to a state of their own". Australia-news-live-high-stakes-for-pm-s-talks-with-trump-after-failure-to-sign-png-treaty-federal-reserve-cuts-rates-amid-concerns-for-labour-market-20250918-p5mvzb. Australia’s population growth has slowed to its lowest rate in almost three years as the intake of migrants continues to ease.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported this morning that in the March quarter, national population growth eased to 1.56 per cent. It’s the lowest growth rate since the middle of 2022. In the quarter, the country added 144,238 people, taking the total population to 27,536,874. Over the 12 months to the end of March, the country added 423,400 residents. The quarterly increase was driven by net overseas migration, which accounted for 110,100 people. This number is highly seasonal as migrants, including international students, tend to move into the country at the start of the year. The March result was 44,000 up on the December quarter but 18,600 down on the March quarter of 2024 and 55,000 down on the same period in 2023. Natural increase – births minus deaths – added 34,200 people in the quarter, a 48 per cent jump on the December result. Former minister Greg Hunt works for Brethren company whose owners made millions on COVID contracts. Within months of leaving parliament, former health minister Greg Hunt started working for a Plymouth Brethren-linked company whose owners won $135 million in government contracts for COVID supplies.
It was the first of three companies linked to senior Brethren figures in Australia and New Zealand that have engaged Mr Hunt as a board adviser, at a time when the church has fostered closer links to the Liberals. The Sydney-based church, which has been described by former members and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as a "cult", is supported by a business empire which includes more than 3,000 companies around the world. Members of the Plymouth Brethren are restricted from socialising with non-Brethren, women are blocked from almost all leadership positions and those who leave the church are shunned and blocked from speaking with their family. Hunt the adviser Westlab reported $54.1 million in COVID contracts with the health department while Mr Hunt was health minister.
Donations and volunteering. Trump has no time for 'mateship' sentimentality and neither should Australia. When The Washington Post published a leaked transcript of Donald Trump's notorious 2017 phone call with Malcolm Turnbull, the US capital was scandalised. Not just by the leak — an extraordinary breach of diplomatic protocol and trust between the two allied leaders — but by the unvarnished raw content. Turnbull pressed an irritated Trump, still in his first week in office making his first round of calls to world leaders, to honour a deal struck with Barack Obama in late 2016 to accept around 1200 asylum seekers from offshore detention. Infuriated, Trump told the prime minister the agreement would make him look "weak and ineffective" mere days into the job.
He then abruptly brought the call to a screeching halt. "That is enough Malcolm. How times have changed These days Trump has no compunction about behaving boorishly in open court, ideally with the foreign leader seated mere centimetres away. Trump's tariff war is prompting many to reconsider Australia's close relationship with the US. Senator Lidia Thorpe says she pledged allegiance to the queen's 'hairs', not heirs, in defence of royal protest. Independent senator Lidia Thorpe has offered an extraordinary defence of whether she breached her parliamentary oath, claiming she pledged allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II's "hairs" rather than her "heirs" when she was sworn into parliament.
The revelation comes after Senator Thorpe interrupted a royal reception in Parliament House on Monday, shouting "you are not our king" and "this is not your land" to King Charles III. On Wednesday, the Indigenous senator was asked by the ABC's Afternoon Briefing if she had renounced her sworn parliamentary affirmation to bear true allegiance to the monarch in her heckling of the king.
"I swore allegiance to the queen's hairs," she replied. "If you listen close enough, it wasn't her 'heirs', it was her 'hairs' that I was giving my allegiance to, and now that, y'know, they are no longer here, I don't know where that stands. "I'm not giving up my job, I'm not resigning. " Loading... The oath reads: Anthony Albanese offers to water down planned environmental watchdog to secure Coalition support.
The federal government has signalled it is willing to make its proposed environmental protection agency (EPA) more business-friendly, in a major concession to win Coalition support that environment groups have branded a "betrayal". Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hinted at the tactical shift in an interview in Western Australia on Monday, when he pushed Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to back resources industry calls to pass a watered-down version of the agency which would mirror the Morrison government's approach to nature conservation.
Instead of creating an environmental watchdog furnished with the power to approve or block project approvals, Mr Albanese for the first time indicated his willingness to establish an EPA charged mainly with overseeing existing nature protection laws. Resources sector desperate for deal before election The shift triggered condemnation and accusations of broken election promises from the Greens and pro-climate environmental groups. Is Australia sending arms to Israel? No, but imports of Israeli weapons continue. When the dial was turned up on the heated Gaza debate in federal parliament last week, the Greens repeated an accusation they have made regularly in recent months: that the federal government is "supporting genocide" through a "two-way arms trade" with Israel, as party leader Adam Bandt put it. Labor ministers have routinely insisted the government has not been exporting any weapons or military parts to Israel, and now defence officials have also pushed back against those claims.
What does the evidence say? Put simply, it suggests the "arms trade" is in fact one way. Defence officials appearing before Senate estimates last week added ballast to the government's claim that no "military" exports had been approved to Israel for five years. The debate over exports During last week's Senate estimates hearings, Labor attempted to push back against these various data sets by asking a series of "Dorothy Dixers" to defence officials, eliciting rare detail about Australia's opaque weapons trade.
Just two years ago, Peter Dutton was committed to a 2030 emissions target. So what's changed? Two years ago, few would have thought Peter Dutton would go to the next election without a 2030 climate target. Back then, the Coalition was still nursing the bruises of an 18-seat election wipe-out. Six Liberal "heartland" seats were lost to "teal" independents. Two more went to the Greens. Liberals knew climate change was a big driver of the voter exodus in these seats. This was obvious. Dutton initially suggested he would do something about it. "I would suspect we will end up with something like 35 per cent just on what we are doing," he told Insiders, just weeks after the election defeat. That commitment to announce a new 2030 target "before the next election" was unremarkable at the time.
For the past two years, the Liberals stuck to the line they would adopt a new target "before the next election". Loading... No one expected it would match Labor's 43 per cent target. Going nuclear Going nuclear takes a long time and little emissions reduction would be achieved by 2030. Loading. Among opposition leaders, Peter Dutton is a miracle survival story. But is he about to nuke himself with women voters? Peter Dutton is a freak of nature. Politically, that is.
Think about it: this is a man who has just completed his second year as Liberal leader, after a shocking election loss in which the House of Menzies was burgled for its richest electoral jewels. Under normal circumstances, a new Liberal leader by this stage of the cycle is in Dante's ninth circle of hell, pleading for mercy while factional enemies armed with petrol-soaked rags on sticks conduct live press conferences chanting his personal failings.
Two years in, Dutton is not only still in office, but nobody inside his own party — or even in the National Party — is trying to blow him out of it. It is a truly extraordinary achievement. His public popularity remains firmly in negative territory, according to Newspoll. Two reasons. The first is that there really isn't, ahem, any alternative. The 2022 election's principal damage to the Liberal Party was the wiping-out of its leadership hatcheries. Loading. Peter Dutton is banking on Queenslanders' NIMBYism at the next election, but when it comes to nuclear, he needs a Yes. There's nothing quite like the sudden realisation your backyard is about to house toxic waste to spur people into action. Facing that prospect in the early 2000s, farmers, conservationists and townies found themselves more than 500km from home, on the steps of Melbourne's iconic Flinders Street Station, handing out more than half a tonne of oranges.
Back home on the outskirts of Mildura, signs dotted the Calder Highway decrying the state Labor government's plans to establish a toxic waste dump on Mallee bushland. Those on the train station steps weren't the typical campaigners you'd see at a protest. It's likely they were nowhere to be seen when the government had previously proposed a different site for a new toxic waste dump. The region in question is often dubbed part of Victoria's fruit bowl. It's renowned for the citrus, grapes and dried fruit it produced. The toxic waste dump wouldn't eventuate, with the state government abandoning its plans. Reality bites With friends like these.
Scott Morrison says Donald Trump gave 'warm reception' to AUKUS pact at Trump Tower meeting. Donald Trump has given a "warm reception" to the AUKUS defence pact during a meeting with Scott Morrison in New York, the former prime minister says. Mr Trump has never publicly endorsed the pact, which was announced by Australia, the US and the UK in 2021, when Mr Morrison was prime minister. That's raised questions about whether the former president — who has questioned America's commitment to some international alliances — would support AUKUS if re-elected in November.
But in a social media post, Mr Morrison said the pair discussed AUKUS on Tuesday night, local time, and it "received a warm reception" from Mr Trump. In an interview with the ABC in Washington on Wednesday, Mr Morrison declined to reveal specifically what Mr Trump told him about his position on AUKUS. "I'm not going to go into that because obviously [it was] a private conversation," he said. Central to the pact is a plan to supply Australia with American-built nuclear-powered submarines. Albanese was so desperate to prove he cares about gendered violence, he forgot one thing: if you're a proper leader, it's not about you.
India's Modi government operated 'nest of spies' in Australia before being disrupted by ASIO. Anthony Albanese reminded how rallies have the ability to haunt the nation's leaders. Awkward France trip shows how far Australia has fallen in the world's favour. For Australia, a secret document raises crucial questions about US foreign policy. Christian Porter is correct — this is an extremely unsatisfactory state of affairs.
There's a sense Scott Morrison's edifice of processes is teetering. Will it come crashing down? A new power has risen in Australian politics — and it's not coming quietly. The government's credentials for dealing with COVID are turning to dust amid vaccine confusion. Morrison's foreign policy shift has been remarkable, but as the G7 Summit looms, Australia needs back-up. AUKUS submarine deal with Australia was 'clumsy', US President Biden tells French President Macron. The truth is hard to find in Scott Morrison's standoff with Emmanuel Macron over subs and AUKUS. Australia's nuclear submarine deal fundamentally changes our relationship with the world. Australia's borders may be opening but it feels like Hermit Kingdom conditions still reign in Canberra.
Scott Morrison's awkward Grace Tame photo opportunity brings a string of other unfortunate images back to haunt him. Grace Tame's frosty exchange with Prime Minister Scott Morrison brings tenure as Australian of the Year to an end. Scott Morrison hasn't quite apologised for pandemic failures, but has copped to making three COVID 'mistakes' Malcolm Turnbull’s son Alex Turnbull says he was contacted by Chinese agents. Unnamed 'traitor' politician cultivated by spies puts loyalty of all politicians in question, says former treasurer. Liberal colleagues reveal inside story of Tony Abbott's brutal demise. Scott Morrison's political feats and faux pas, from refused handshakes to coal in parliament. Anthony Albanese invites Xi Jinping to Australia after landmark summit at Beijing's Great Hall of the People.
Did Indigenous people want a Voice? The results from some of Australia's most remote communities suggest many did. The Voice campaign was infected with disinformation. Who's in charge of inoculating Australians against lies? The No victory in Voice to Parliament referendum reveals more than a divide between urban and regional Australia. South Australian MP James Stevens clashes with Natasha Wanganeen over Voice and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price during ugly Q+A. The Voice: how do other countries represent Indigenous voices in government? The bitter politics and hypocrisy of the Voice debate will mark it as yet another ugly chapter in Australia's history.
How a soap opera star pushed a conspiracy theory linking the Voice to Parliament to a UN takeover. Is it ethical non-Indigenous people get to decide on the Voice? Is it OK for one group to have rights others don't? An ethicist weighs in. Watch full speech: Liberal senator blasts Morrison, calling PM a 'bully' with 'no moral compass' Jacqui Lambie unloads on Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Q+A over Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells and the federal budget.
Cult that defines Trump's power is just a few scratches away from the surface in Australia. NSW Labor MP Shaoquett Moselmane's home, office raided by police - ABC News. If press conferences are anything to go by, the brief sparkle of better politics has come to an end - ABC News. 'Better for Her Majesty not to know': palace letters reveal Queen's role in sacking of Australian PM Whitlam | Australia news.
Scott Morrison: how he went from Artful Dodger to political shapeshifter | Katharine Murphy | Australia news. The Australian Constitution. Remembering the Tasmanian Dam Case | Opinions on High. Why Australian MPs are heading for the high court over dual citizenship – explainer | Australia news. Scott Morrison says Trump travel ban shows 'world is catching up' to Australia | Australia news. Theconversation. Wiradjuri woman sings Linda Burney into parliament for her maiden speech – video | Australia news. Paul Keating's challenge: view Australia through Aboriginal eyes.
Tony Abbott: top 10 bloopers of his prime ministership – video | Australia news. How to waste 200 words. Fifty-four adults and children 'captive for decades' rescued from Shining Path. Why Tony isn't pointing fingers. Coalition MPs demand proper say on next Speaker as Bronwyn Bishop quits | Australia news. Queensland sovereign citizen loses bid to carry guns after Rockhampton arrest attempt. Mark Latham's Downfall Started With This Very Intense Handshake. Greens senator Jordon Steele-John calls on Australia to question AUKUS pact as Jacinta Price continues to rail against Voice on Q+A.
Inside the late night meetings that came to define Anthony Albanese's Voice referendum gamble. AUKUS is Australia's message to China that the Western alliance is strong. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin aren't buying it. What legal woes does former US President Donald Trump face? | Donald Trump News. From climate emergencies to war, COVID and living costs, the future is now: What will our politicians learn from 2022? The Bell inquiry shreds Scott Morrison's credibility and for Labor the timing couldn't be better. Government 'looking hard' at Russia's presence in Australia, amid diplomatic tensions and spying concerns. Log into Facebook.
Trump openly embraces, amplifies QAnon conspiracy theories | AP News. After Queen Elizabeth II's death, Australia is talking about a republic again. How could it be achieved? Scott Morrison's secret self-appointments point to an insidious weakening of the guardrails of Australia's democracy. Scott Morrison's horror show isn't over — and there's a high risk of more damage to come. Grattan on Friday: The Scott Morrison horror show has a way to run yet. Scott Morrison gave two reasons for secretly taking on five ministerial roles. But his lack of trust is what's most extraordinary.
PM to outline proposed referendum question on Indigenous Voice to Parliament. After more than 200 years of waiting, Albanese puts forward a 'simple' proposition for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.