BREAKING NEWS Jacinta Nampijinpa Price makes huge leadership move days after defecting to the Liberals
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has announced her candidacy for deputy leader of the Liberal Party.
Ms Price made the announcement on Sunday as she officially endorsed Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor for party leader.
'As I've said with respect to my decision to change party rooms, these are not matters which I take lightly, and this decision today brings with it a great deal of responsibility which I fully accept,' she said.
'There is no question that returning to our roots as a party is critical right now.
'If we want to inspire and empower Australians across our country, we must return to these roots – these basic values – that define who we are as a party.'
more to come
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
20 minutes ago
- The Independent
Dutch center-left parties unite to challenge the right in a historic merger
Two center-left Dutch political parties agreed Thursday to a formal merger, just months away from a general election where they will seek to turn the political tide in the Netherlands away from right-wing populism. Members of the Labor Party and Green Left both voted overwhelmingly in favor of the move to form a single new party. The parties have been working together in parliament for years. Now they will go to the polls as a single entity known by its Dutch name, Groen Links-PvdA. A new party with a new name will follow next year, the parties said after the vote. 'This is a historic moment. This step shows that we, as parties, believe in the power of cooperation, because we can achieve so much more together than apart,' the chair of the Labor Party, Esther-Mirjam Sent, said in a statement. Green Left chair, Katinka Eikelenboom, added that her party's members 'choose with full conviction for cooperation and renewal. We are building a broad, green and social people's party that is ready for the future.' The Oct. 29 election for all 150 seats in the lower house of the Dutch parliament was triggered when right-wing anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders pulled his ministers out of the four-party ruling coalition in a dispute over the pace of reforms to implement tough new measures to rein in migration. The remaining three parties remain in power in a caretaker capacity under Prime Minister Dick Schoof until a new government is formed. The Labor Party is led in parliament by former European Commission climate chief Frans Timmermans, a former Dutch foreign minister. The two center-left parties currently trail Wilders' Party for Freedom in Dutch polling.
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Australia to boost aerial surveillance of Pacific for illegal fishing fleets
SYDNEY, June 12 (Reuters) - Australia plans to significantly boost surveillance of Pacific Islands territorial waters, spending A$477 million ($310.72 million) on aerial patrols for illegal fishing fleets, tender documents viewed by Reuters show, as China takes steps towards sending its coast guard to the region. Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will visit Fiji on Friday, the Fiji Times newspaper reported, after the government of Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka last week approved a maritime security agreement that will see Australia fund a patrol boat for Fiji. Australia will operate commercial aerial patrols to support Pacific Island countries monitoring exclusive economic zones which span millions of kilometres of ocean. Efforts to tackle illegal fishing also led to a new monitoring centre being opened in Fiji in April. Australia's defence department declined to comment on the aerial tender, and Pacific Minister Pat Conroy did not respond to a request for comment. Reuters reported last week that China's coast guard is taking further steps towards high seas boarding of fishing boats in the Pacific for the first time, risking tensions with Taiwanese fleets that also ply the region. The Chinese Coast Guard demonstrated the capabilities of one of its largest ships, used to enforce maritime law in the Taiwan Strait, to 10 Pacific Island ministers, including Fiji's, in China a fortnight ago. China has registered 26 coast guard vessels for Pacific Ocean patrols with the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, although it is yet to conduct an inspection, WCPFC officials said. China declined to comment. Australia has gifted two dozen patrol boats to Pacific Island nations, and operates navy and air force patrols for illegal fishing in the region several times a year. Sangaa Clark, chief executive of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement, representing nine Pacific Island countries controlling the world's largest tuna fishery, said the group has not invited China to conduct coast guard patrols, and instead relied on Australian-funded surveillance and patrols by Australia, New Zealand, France and the United States. Pacific security expert Peter Connolly, a fellow at the University of New South Wales, said Chinese Coast Guard patrols in the region would "introduce geostrategic tensions to the policing of the Pacific's fisheries". "This is particularly likely because the two most common nationalities of illegal fishermen in the Pacific have been from the PRC and from Taiwan," he said, referring to the People's Republic of China. ($1 = 1.5352 Australian dollars)
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
'No one cares what happened to you - you are not Brittany Higgins': Political staffer with a disturbingly familiar story exposes $2.4m taxpayer funded compo double standard
A parliamentary researcher who allegedly suffered a similar rape and bullying ordeal to Brittany Higgins says the government treated her completely differently. Anna Hough, 46, alleges she was raped as a young woman in politics and then bullied and discriminated against by her bosses after she raised it with them. Ms Hough claims she was sexually abused and raped by a political staffer while volunteering for the Australian Democrats between 2000 and 2001. When Ms Higgins went public in 2021 to famously disclose her alleged rape by Bruce Lehrmann, Ms Hough said it triggered her trauma from her own experience years earlier which led her to finally tell her bosses. But Ms Hough alleges that instead of being offered support by the Department of Parliamentary Services, she was sidelined and bullied by her managers. The mother-of-three from Canberra lodged a legal claim against the Federal Government in September 2023 covering both the alleged historic assaults and alleged bullying. But while Ms Higgins was given a $2.4million settlement after one day of mediation, Ms Hough claims she was instead treated like a 'second-class victim'. She told Daily Mail Australia she has been twice asked to sign non-disclosure agreements by the Labor Government and was given low-ball cash offers to settle. Now, after the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) found on Thursday there was 'no corruption issue' with Ms Higgins' huge settlement - which was signed after a day partly to avoid 'ongoing trauma' - Ms Hough has spoken out. 'I was a victim of alleged parliamentary workplace rape, sexual assault, bullying and discrimination but the Commonwealth has shown no concern about ongoing trauma to me,' Ms Hough told Daily Mail Australia. 'Instead, I have been offered a tiny fraction of the compensation, told repeatedly by lawyers and journalists that "no one cares what happened to you because you are not Brittany Higgins", and pressured to sign NDAs.' Ms Hough said some of the reasons she had been given by lawyers for the dramatic difference in settlement figures included that, 'you weren't a Liberal staffer', and 'that was a political decision'. '(But) we are supposed to have equality before the law in Australia,' she said. 'That should mean that if the Prime Minister, say, gets a speeding ticket he has to pay it the same way you or I do. 'And that if I am mistreated in the workplace, I get the same compensation as someone else who is similarly mistreated, whether they are the CEO or the cleaner.' Ms Hough stressed that her issue was with the government's handling of her own case, not how Ms Higgins' was treated. 'To be clear, I am not attacking Brittany Higgins, I am attacking the government and its inconsistency,' she said. The NACC said on Thursday that 'a critical consideration during the settlement process was avoiding ongoing trauma to Ms Higgins'. The former Liberal Party staffer's claim for alleged bullying and victimisation - not the rape itself - took about 11 months before it was resolved after a single day of mediation. 'But mine has now taken 20 months and counting,' Ms Hough said. 'The Commonwealth took four months just to respond to our first settlement offer. 'No one has shown any interest in avoiding ongoing trauma to me.' On Thursday morning, the NACC took the extraordinary step of revealing its preliminary findings into Ms Higgins' case to 'clear the air' around the 'scrutiny and speculation' surrounding the payout. It found that there was 'no corruption issue' involving any public officials. It also stated that the resolution of mediation after just a day was 'unexceptional' and revealed that Ms Higgins actually received less than the maximum amount recommended by external legal advice. Ms Higgins' former boss Senator Linda Reynolds, who lodged the original complaint, said she was 'bitterly disappointed' by the findings. 'My primary concern has always been how the Commonwealth could possibly settle unsubstantiated and statute barred claims made against me, alleging egregious conduct on my part without taking a single statement from me or speaking to me at all,' she said. Senator Reynolds has also launched legal action against the Commonwealth over the compensation payment, alleging that government lawyers were 'hopelessly conflicted'. The NACC said the question of whether Ms Higgins told mistruths during the pay-off talks was outside of their remit. 'Whether Ms Higgins made misrepresentations during the negotiations is not within the scope of the Commission's jurisdiction, as at the relevant time she was not a Commonwealth public official,' the NACC statement said. In his judgment in the Bruce Lehrmann defamation case last year, Federal Court Judge Michael Lee found that Ms Higgins made at least nine untrue representations when negotiating her settlement with the commission. Senator Reynolds noted that 'the NACC highlighted that whether or not a corruption issue exists is a different issue from whether there has been any breach of duty, misfeasance or negligence by the Commonwealth or its lawyers in relation to the settlement'. 'This distinction further reinforces the importance of my decision to pursue these issues in the Federal Court,' she added. Ms Reynolds is also awaiting the outcome of a blockbuster defamation claim she brought against Ms Higgins and her husband David Sharaz over social media posts the pair made about her. A judgement is expected to be handed down in the Supreme Court of Western Australia later this month. Ms Hough first went public with her allegations in an interview with Sky News in April. Ms Hough said her motivation was the 'principle that all survivors deserve justice - regardless of their profile, role, or the media attention their case attracts'. 'I've been silenced for too long,' she added. 'Given the ALP's response to an alleged Parliament House rape cover up last election, the hypocrisy on display in their treatment of me, particularly in trying to silence me, is quite something.' Ms Hough has not had an affiliation with a political party since 2012 and has never been a member of the Liberal Party. She was a 21-year-old university student working as a volunteer for the Australian Democrats when she alleges she was raped and sexually assaulted by a political staffer between April 2000 and May 2001. 'The power imbalance, combined with a total lack of reporting mechanisms and a culture of silence, made it impossible for me to speak up,' she told Sky News. 'When I sought help outside the party after the first assault, I was made to feel that it was my fault. No one suggested I report the assault, seek counselling, or speak to the police.' It was later, during the MeToo era, when Ms. Higgins came forward with her own trauma, that Ms. Hough started suffering PTSD symptoms. At that stage, she had been working in the Department of Parliamentary Services since 2016. She disclosed her trauma to her bosses who allegedly failed to offer support. 'Instead of being supported, I was pressured to step down from a more senior acting role, denied a promotion, and treated as a burden,' she added. 'The bullying and discrimination I faced at DPS were re-traumatising.' She quit her role in April 2023 and filed her legal claim against the Commonwealth five months later. Ms Hough claims she was twice asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement during settlement negotiations. But a spokesperson for the Attorney-General's Department has previously denied that they would ask any victims to stay silent with the use of non-disclosure agreements. Daily Mail Australia approached the Attorney-General's department for further comment. During her time working in parliament, Ms Hough contributed to the Set the Standard report, which examined workplace behaviour and culture in the corridors of power. She has also continued to call for the establishment of a redress scheme for survivors of abuse in Commonwealth parliamentary workplaces.
