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
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The Guardian
26 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Conceived in secrecy and born in haste, Aukus is on its last legs. When will Labor call the undertaker?
Most of us avoid thinking about the end of life and the 'last things'. The Albanese government is no different: it is now deeply invested in Aukus, with no other solution to Australia's need for an effective submarine. While it may be a bit early to call for the undertaker there is no doubt that the Aukus patient is in serious trouble. Aukus had a less than immaculate conception. It was conceived in secrecy and born in haste, a tribute to political opportunism and a travesty of disciplined planning. The enthusiasm of theatrical announcements notwithstanding, it was in trouble from the beginning. The US Navy had serious doubts about both the ability of US shipbuilders to deliver submarines in any workable timeframe and the ability of the Royal Australian Navy to integrate and operate them. That was not a question of trust but of capacity – on both sides. And, of course, experienced and well-informed Australian defence planners rang the warning bells from the beginning. Now reality has caught up with us. The Pentagon has announced a review of the Aukus agreement to ensure that it meets President Donald Trump's 'America First' policy. The US submarine construction program is in trouble. Australia's US$500m contribution to its submarine building industry will have no impact on the production rate, which needs to double if our ambitions are to be met. There's no money back offer here. But injury is sure to follow insult. The US review will be led by Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of defense. He is a clever Trump acolyte who signalled his scepticism well before Trump won the presidency. The passage of Trump's 'big beautiful bill' through the Congress, and the looming prospect of a massive debt blowout, can only have reinforced his doubts. These doubts are well grounded. In several reports dealing with Aukus, the Congressional Research Service identified critical bottlenecks in the US production line for both the Virginia-class and the new Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines. And it is just as concerned about Australia's ability to absorb the new technologies. It should be. The defense secretary Pete Hegseth's can-rattling at the Shangri-La conference in Singapore further diminished Aukus's chances. Hegseth told the defence minister, Richard Marles, that Australia needed to up its defence spending target to 3.5% of GDP. Of course, there was no suggestion on how the money should be spent. Spending for its own sake fits the bill, which is more or less what Aukus has been about from the beginning. Quite properly, the prime minister's response was textbook: Australia will decide on its defence spending for itself. And perhaps now is the time for Albanese to institute a parliamentary inquiry into Aukus. So, where does all of this leave the pact? Far from being in the deep oceans, it is further up the proverbial creek. The best that Australia might have hoped for was the homeporting of a few US Virginia-class submarines on rotation at Fremantle in Western Australia, stretching out over the next several decades. Even that does not really meet US needs for forward positioning of attack submarines in the northern Pacific – the entire reason, it would seem, for the former prime minister Scott Morrison's precipitate and unadvised decision in the first place. From the beginning, the Labor team has been reluctant to call the ambulance or the undertaker. The Albanese government has no other submarine plan – Aukus is it. Or at least, Aukus was it. The Elbridge review is a circuit breaker. It forces the Albanese government to address Australia's submarine needs and capabilities in a considered and disciplined way for the first time in more than 20 years. Thinking about the last things encourages some of us to think about resurrection and the next life. Just as Australia could marshal the engineering and technological skills to plan and build the Collins-class submarines, so it can do it again. The Americans have effectively made the decision for us. It's time for plan A – where 'A' is Australia, not Aukus. We have to get on with it – now. Allan Behm is a special adviser at the Australia Institute in Canberra
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
US Democratic National Committee Vice Chair David Hogg to leave his role
WASHINGTON, June 11 (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic National Committee Vice Chair David Hogg, who has voiced support for progressive primary challenges to Democratic incumbents running for re-election in the 2026 midterm elections, said on Wednesday he will not run for his post again. The party said its members had voted 294-99 to redo the contest that elected Hogg and another Democrat, Malcolm Kenyatta, as vice chairs earlier this year. In late April, DNC Chair Ken Martin issued a warning to Hogg to back away from plans to help finance progressive primary challenges to Democratic incumbents running for re-election in the 2026 midterm elections. Martin's message came with the warning that Hogg could get involved in Democratic primary campaigns but not while holding down a DNC job, as the party weighed possible rule changes to facilitate the firings of DNC officials for such activities. Hogg had said he would raise money through an outside group, "Leaders We Deserve," to foster such challenges. "It is clear that there is a fundamental disagreement about the role of a Vice Chair - and it's okay to have disagreements. What isn't okay is allowing this to remain our focus when there is so much more we need to be focused on," Hogg said in a statement on Wednesday. "I have decided to not run in this upcoming election so the party can focus on what really matters." Hogg, 25, gained national attention after surviving a 2018 mass shooting at his high school in Parkland, Florida. He became a voice for tighter gun control and has evolved into a political activist. Since then, he has been active in progressive causes and in February won a DNC vice chair spot, as the party intensified efforts to appeal to more progressive voters. The Democratic Party is engaged in a battle over its future after President Donald Trump won the 2024 U.S. elections while his Republican Party won control of both chambers of Congress. That left Democrats with little ability in Washington to limit Trump's policies, and sparked a wave of intra-party recriminations.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Paul Keating says US Aukus review could ‘save Australia from itself' as sceptics hail chance to exit pact
A chorus of Aukus sceptics, including former prime ministers Paul Keating and Malcolm Turnbull, say a US review represents an 'opportunity' for Australia to escape a controversial deal that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars and leave Australia, ultimately, less able to defend itself. The US department of defense has announced a 30-day review of the Aukus nuclear-powered submarine deal 'ensuring that this initiative of the previous administration is aligned with the president's 'America first' agenda,' a Pentagon official said, 'and that the defense industrial base is meeting our needs'. Keating said that the review 'might very well be the moment Washington saves Australia from itself … from the most poorly conceived defence procurement program ever adopted by an Australian government'. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email He said in a Thursday statement that the Pentagon review was 'subjecting the deal to the kind of scrutiny that should have been applied to AUKUS in the first instance', describing the deal as 'hurriedly scribbled on the back of an envelope by Scott Morrison, along with the vacuous British blowhard Boris Johnson, and the confused President, Joe Biden – put together on an English beach, a world away from where Australia's strategic interests primarily lie.' Keating said the US would lose nothing by walking away from the deal and still 'achieve what they have been after all along … turning Australia 'into a US nuclear-armed fort pointed against China'. Turnbull, whose pre-existing submarine deal with French giant Naval was dramatically torn up in favour of the Aukus agreement in 2021, said Australia should 'wake up' and review the agreement itself. 'The UK is conducting a review of Aukus. The US department of defence is conducting a review of Aukus. But Australia, which has the most at stake, has no review,' he said on X on earlier Thursday. 'Our parliament to date has been the least curious and least informed. Time to wake up?' Former foreign minister Bob Carr said Australia and the US needed to come to a 'mutual agreement' that recognised Aukus served neither's interests, and allowed either side to withdraw without weakening the alliance. 'The Trump Administration has picked a notable sceptic of Aukus [Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon's under secretary of defense for policy] to conduct the review for one reason: they know they won't be able to supply the boats to Australia because their own ship building lags so significantly,' Carr told Guardian Australia. 'It is best for us that we don't linger over this, because America's got the option of increasing the cost to us and forcing us to accept the basing of a sizeable submarine fleet in our ports, every vessel being a nuclear target should there be war between the US and China.' The former South Australian senator Rex Patrick, an ex-submariner and established Aukus critic, said the US review was a 'great opportunity' for Australia to walk away from an increasingly unworkable agreement that would jeopardise Australia's sovereignty and capacity to defend itself. 'There is no doubt this project is both unaffordable and highly risky, and delivers a solution to Australia a decade after it's supposedly needed.' Senator David Shoebridge, Greens defence and foreign affairs spokesperson, said Australia needed to pursue more independent defence and foreign policies, 'that do not require us to bend our will and shovel wealth to an increasingly erratic and reckless Trump USA'. He said the Aukus deal made Australia a 'junior partner' in American military strategy, rather than an equal ally. 'Donald Trump is erratic, reckless and careless of America's allies and alliances but he does have one fairly constant trait, he puts US interests first and allies last. 'The USA is reviewing whether to scrap Aukus while Australia has just handed the US an $800 million Aukus tribute payment. We're locked into a $375bn deal that our 'partner' might walk away from.' Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion Shoebridge said he believed the US review would find that America could not spare the submarines to sell to Australia, and argued parliament should launch a full inquiry into the Aukus deal, before the government 'wastes more billions on submarines we will never see … [in] a deal that ties us to America's military aggression against China.' Under pillar one of the agreement, signed in 2021, the US will sell Australia between three and five Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines, with the first to be delivered in 2032. These will replace Australia's ageing Collins class diesel-electric submarines before Australia's own Aukus nuclear-powered submarines can be built. By the 'late 2030s', according to Australia's submarine industry strategy, UK shipbuilders will deliver the first specifically designed-and-built Aukus submarine to its own Royal Navy. Australia's first Aukus submarine – based on the UK design but to be built in South Australia – will be in the water 'in the early 2040s'. Aukus is forecast to cost Australia up to $368bn to the mid-2050s. Australia is providing significant subsidies to the industrial bases of both the US and UK. It has already paid $A798m – the first instalment of $A4.7bn pledged – to the US. It will pay A$4.6bn to the UK. But the deal's feasibility has come under significant pressure regarding both nuclear-capable senior partners In the US, there are consistent concerns that America's sclerotic ship-building industry is incapable of building enough submarines for its own defences. Legally, the US can only sell the boats if the commander-in-chief – whoever is then US president – certifies that America relinquishing a submarine will not diminish its own undersea capability. The US navy already has a shortfall of submarines, expected to worsen over coming years, and shipyards in America are running up to three years late in building new Virginia-class submarines, a 2024 US navy report found. Colby, who is leading the US Aukus review, has repeatedly said he is 'very sceptical' about the pact and its benefits for the US. He told the US Senate armed service committee that the US was not building enough submarines for its own defence, and would not sell submarines to Australia if that might jeopardise American interests. 'We don't want our servicemen and women to be in a weaker position and more vulnerable… because [the attack submarines] are not in the right place at the right time.' The UK parliament announced its own inquiry into Aukus in April, which will examine whether 'geopolitical shifts since the initial agreement in 2021' have rendered the agreement unworkable In January, the UK government's own major projects agency described the UK's plan to build the nuclear reactor cores needed to power Australia's Aukus submarines as 'unachievable'.
