Right-wing party founder cautioned
Morgan Jonas, an alt-right blogger and founder of the Freedom Party of Victoria, was warned by the AEC on Tuesday for only partially authorising corflute political signs.
The materials authorised by 'M. Jonas Melbourne Victoria 3000' were deemed non-compliant under the Commonwealth Electoral Act because they did not include Mr Jonas's full name and full street address. One of Morgan Jonas's non-compliant signs. Supplied Credit: Supplied
The signs were displayed in at least four states, including the divisions of Chisholm, Hawke, Bendigo and Menzies in Victoria, the divisions of Calare and Bennelong in NSW, the division of Blair in Queensland and the division of Boothby in South Australia.
One of the non-compliant signs displayed in the Blair electorate attacked Labor MP Shayne Neumann, calling for 'Neumann out & a new man in!'. Mr Jonas led anti-vaccination and anti-lockdown protests during the Covid-19 pandemic. NewsWire / Wayne Taylor Credit: News Corp Australia
The AEC has obtained an undertaking from Mr Jonas that he will 'cease distributing material that is not correctly authorised and will ensure that stickers are placed on all existing corflutes and signs'.
Updated signage now bears authorisation from 'Morgan C. Jonas 8/220 Collins Street Melbourne Victoria 3000'. Updated signage now bears authorisation from 'Morgan C. Jonas 8/220 Collins Street Melbourne Victoria 3000'. Supplied Credit: Supplied
Mr Jonas recently shared a post on Facebook that announced the Freedom Party of Victoria would be 'skipping the federal election'.
'You will see me interacting with some of Victoria's minor right candidates, all of whom are solid picks,' he wrote.
According to the AEC, authorisations are important because they allow voters to easily find out the source of the electoral matter, persons participating in public debate relating to elections and reforms can be held accountable, and communications of electoral matter can be traced.
Mr Jonas has been contacted for comment.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sydney Morning Herald
4 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
What the RBA governor's struggle to get a room to focus on rates says about the economy
Low inflation and official interest rates through the 2010s, then COVID, the post-pandemic inflation explosion, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and more recently the war in Gaza all diverted attention away from the productivity slowdown. But with inflation subsiding and Donald Trump upending the global trading order, most governments – including the freshly re-elected administration of Anthony Albanese – are revisiting ways to get their economies back to health. Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who will sit through all roundtable sessions, and whose department will be driving much of the analysis of the various proposals put up by participants, has cautioned that those looking for instant results on Thursday evening will be disappointed. '[The point of] this economic reform roundtable is not to make decisions, it's to inform the government's decisions,' Chalmers told ABC Radio National Breakfast on Wednesday. 'And that's the point that we have made all along.' The roundtable has attracted almost 900 submissions, although some proposals appear dead on arrival. There seems little appetite, for instance, to support the ACTU's ambit claim for a four-day working week without a cut in pay. Loading The Productivity Commission has, through five papers canvassing everything from tax to AI, made more than 40 separate recommendations of its own. The government has held a series of industry-specific roundtables in areas such as mining, agriculture and housing, where a host of ideas have surfaced. Chalmers sat down with business leaders and lobby groups ahead of the roundtable, as have other ministers. 'I think it has been a very worthwhile thing that we are shaking the tree for ideas, and the prime minister and I are aligned in the way we go about that,' Chalmers told Ratio National. The reason for so many ideas bubbling up is twofold. The first is that it has been a long, long time since a government has asked all and sundry to produce a shopping list of suggestions. The second is that there is no single bullet solution to a productivity problem that has afflicted every nation and almost every corner of the economy. In housing, for instance, the average time in Australia to complete a block of apartments has soared since 2008 from around 17 months to 28 months. Building a house has increased from seven months to 10. But in comparison to other countries, the Australian construction sector is almost a beacon of hope. The Productivity Commission found building productivity in Australia is outperforming the US, Britain and Sweden. Explaining its reason for lowering its productivity assumption, the Reserve Bank suggested a number of reasons. They include declining dynamism among businesses and across the labour market, slower rollout of technological breakthroughs, falling competition, regulatory red tape, a slowdown in the growth of skills among workers, and a drop in trade linkages across the world. Even measuring productivity can be difficult. Some pundits have blamed the increase in financial resources and people in the care sectors of the economy (aged care, childcare, health, disability) for the slowdown in productivity. Measuring productivity in these sectors, where relatively low-paid people provide intense services to the frail, sick, old or young, is notoriously difficult. The Productivity Commission this week reported that by a traditional measure of productivity, it had grown at just 0.1 per cent a year across the nation's hospitals between 2008-09 and 2018-19. By contrast, productivity across the entire economy grew by 0.7 per cent per annum. Yet that doesn't consider the huge improvements in the quality of care or patient outcomes. Cancer treatments, the commission said, are far more effective today than they were a few years ago. When you account for quality, healthcare productivity grew at 3 per cent per year through much of the past decade, dwarfing the rest of the economy. 'Simply put, Australians are getting better outcomes, but not necessarily more care services, per dollar spent,' the commission noted. Loading Another issue is that productivity in the mining sector – the nation's most productive based on the value of its outputs – has fallen off a cliff over the past five years. It has tumbled by 20 per cent, largely because miners are now tapping lower-value deposits while facing a string of natural disasters that have flooded coal mines or shut down key production sites. No matter the varied causes, it's clear the government and most participants want to target a productivity bugbear: red tape and bureaucracy. The battle to get bike helmets into the economy is a small-scale example. While the nation's cyclists protect their heads with imported helmets, the safety standards governing the headwear differs. It costs importers about $14 million a year to comply with those different standards. Loading The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission started a process to align the European and American standards governing helmets sold domestically in 2016. It was only completed last year, but it has yet to be signed off by all states and territories. 'The net result is that eight years after realising the value of harmonisation, most Australians are yet to see benefits,' the Productivity Commission reported earlier this month. Productivity is not just red tape or new machines or tax. The skills of the workforce are also a vital component. The Smith Family says there are 3.3 million people living in poverty in Australia, including 761,000 children. Loading It's pinning its hopes on the roundtable coming up with ways to lift school completion rates and overall education outcomes, given their strong connection to improved wages and incomes. 'We know children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are more susceptible to falling behind in the classroom, disengaging with school, not finishing year 12 and not being able to fully participate in the workforce,' the charity's chief executive officer, Doug Taylor, says. 'To boost the pool of talent in the nation's workforce, we must plug the holes to stop students experiencing disadvantage from falling through the cracks.' Despite the reticence of the government to deal with the multitude of issues with the nation's tax system, many people believe the purpose of next week is to put tax reform squarely at the centre of Anthony Albanese's second-term agenda. Independent MP Allegra Spender, who has a seat around at the roundtable, is looking for a shift to a dual income tax system. Investors would lose the ability to offset their taxable income through losses on their property holdings, with the revenue used to reduce personal income tax rates. 'You should be rewarded for investing in yourself, not for expanding your property portfolio,' she said. Ben Phillips, from the ANU's Centre for Social Policy Research, has proposed a major simplification of the entire system that includes axing the Medicare levy and the low-income tax offset, removing Family Tax Benefit B (while substantially lifting Family Tax Benefit A), and making changes to JobSeeker and the parenting payment. He says that over the years, the tax and welfare system has been subject to changes that often appear ad hoc, politically motivated or driven by short-term budget goals. 'Many of these changes lack a clear rationale and, arguably, are unnecessary and have themselves added to complexity,' he says. From family payments to suburban housing blocks to helmet standards, productivity – and its slowdown – permeates the economy. Without any concrete proposals out of next week, Michele Bullock will be joined by a prime minister and treasurer with concern etched on their collective faces.
The Age
4 hours ago
- The Age
What the RBA governor's struggle to get a room to focus on rates says about the economy
Low inflation and official interest rates through the 2010s, then COVID, the post-pandemic inflation explosion, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and more recently the war in Gaza all diverted attention away from the productivity slowdown. But with inflation subsiding and Donald Trump upending the global trading order, most governments – including the freshly re-elected administration of Anthony Albanese – are revisiting ways to get their economies back to health. Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who will sit through all roundtable sessions, and whose department will be driving much of the analysis of the various proposals put up by participants, has cautioned that those looking for instant results on Thursday evening will be disappointed. '[The point of] this economic reform roundtable is not to make decisions, it's to inform the government's decisions,' Chalmers told ABC Radio National Breakfast on Wednesday. 'And that's the point that we have made all along.' The roundtable has attracted almost 900 submissions, although some proposals appear dead on arrival. There seems little appetite, for instance, to support the ACTU's ambit claim for a four-day working week without a cut in pay. Loading The Productivity Commission has, through five papers canvassing everything from tax to AI, made more than 40 separate recommendations of its own. The government has held a series of industry-specific roundtables in areas such as mining, agriculture and housing, where a host of ideas have surfaced. Chalmers sat down with business leaders and lobby groups ahead of the roundtable, as have other ministers. 'I think it has been a very worthwhile thing that we are shaking the tree for ideas, and the prime minister and I are aligned in the way we go about that,' Chalmers told Ratio National. The reason for so many ideas bubbling up is twofold. The first is that it has been a long, long time since a government has asked all and sundry to produce a shopping list of suggestions. The second is that there is no single bullet solution to a productivity problem that has afflicted every nation and almost every corner of the economy. In housing, for instance, the average time in Australia to complete a block of apartments has soared since 2008 from around 17 months to 28 months. Building a house has increased from seven months to 10. But in comparison to other countries, the Australian construction sector is almost a beacon of hope. The Productivity Commission found building productivity in Australia is outperforming the US, Britain and Sweden. Explaining its reason for lowering its productivity assumption, the Reserve Bank suggested a number of reasons. They include declining dynamism among businesses and across the labour market, slower rollout of technological breakthroughs, falling competition, regulatory red tape, a slowdown in the growth of skills among workers, and a drop in trade linkages across the world. Even measuring productivity can be difficult. Some pundits have blamed the increase in financial resources and people in the care sectors of the economy (aged care, childcare, health, disability) for the slowdown in productivity. Measuring productivity in these sectors, where relatively low-paid people provide intense services to the frail, sick, old or young, is notoriously difficult. The Productivity Commission this week reported that by a traditional measure of productivity, it had grown at just 0.1 per cent a year across the nation's hospitals between 2008-09 and 2018-19. By contrast, productivity across the entire economy grew by 0.7 per cent per annum. Yet that doesn't consider the huge improvements in the quality of care or patient outcomes. Cancer treatments, the commission said, are far more effective today than they were a few years ago. When you account for quality, healthcare productivity grew at 3 per cent per year through much of the past decade, dwarfing the rest of the economy. 'Simply put, Australians are getting better outcomes, but not necessarily more care services, per dollar spent,' the commission noted. Loading Another issue is that productivity in the mining sector – the nation's most productive based on the value of its outputs – has fallen off a cliff over the past five years. It has tumbled by 20 per cent, largely because miners are now tapping lower-value deposits while facing a string of natural disasters that have flooded coal mines or shut down key production sites. No matter the varied causes, it's clear the government and most participants want to target a productivity bugbear: red tape and bureaucracy. The battle to get bike helmets into the economy is a small-scale example. While the nation's cyclists protect their heads with imported helmets, the safety standards governing the headwear differs. It costs importers about $14 million a year to comply with those different standards. Loading The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission started a process to align the European and American standards governing helmets sold domestically in 2016. It was only completed last year, but it has yet to be signed off by all states and territories. 'The net result is that eight years after realising the value of harmonisation, most Australians are yet to see benefits,' the Productivity Commission reported earlier this month. Productivity is not just red tape or new machines or tax. The skills of the workforce are also a vital component. The Smith Family says there are 3.3 million people living in poverty in Australia, including 761,000 children. Loading It's pinning its hopes on the roundtable coming up with ways to lift school completion rates and overall education outcomes, given their strong connection to improved wages and incomes. 'We know children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are more susceptible to falling behind in the classroom, disengaging with school, not finishing year 12 and not being able to fully participate in the workforce,' the charity's chief executive officer, Doug Taylor, says. 'To boost the pool of talent in the nation's workforce, we must plug the holes to stop students experiencing disadvantage from falling through the cracks.' Despite the reticence of the government to deal with the multitude of issues with the nation's tax system, many people believe the purpose of next week is to put tax reform squarely at the centre of Anthony Albanese's second-term agenda. Independent MP Allegra Spender, who has a seat around at the roundtable, is looking for a shift to a dual income tax system. Investors would lose the ability to offset their taxable income through losses on their property holdings, with the revenue used to reduce personal income tax rates. 'You should be rewarded for investing in yourself, not for expanding your property portfolio,' she said. Ben Phillips, from the ANU's Centre for Social Policy Research, has proposed a major simplification of the entire system that includes axing the Medicare levy and the low-income tax offset, removing Family Tax Benefit B (while substantially lifting Family Tax Benefit A), and making changes to JobSeeker and the parenting payment. He says that over the years, the tax and welfare system has been subject to changes that often appear ad hoc, politically motivated or driven by short-term budget goals. 'Many of these changes lack a clear rationale and, arguably, are unnecessary and have themselves added to complexity,' he says. From family payments to suburban housing blocks to helmet standards, productivity – and its slowdown – permeates the economy. Without any concrete proposals out of next week, Michele Bullock will be joined by a prime minister and treasurer with concern etched on their collective faces.
Sky News AU
7 hours ago
- Sky News AU
Putin heaps praise on ‘sincere' Donald Trump, hints Russia and US could strike nuclear arms deal
Russian President Vladimir Putin lauded the Trump administration's 'energetic' and 'sincere' efforts to end the war in Ukraine — and suggested the US and Russia could reach a deal on nuclear arms control at their summit in Alaska on Friday. Putin appeared optimistic that forthcoming meetings in Anchorage between Moscow and Washington could 'create long-term conditions for peace between our countries, as well as in Europe, and in the world as a whole,' he told senior officials during a briefing on Thursday. 'The current American administration… is making, in my opinion, quite energetic and sincere efforts to stop the hostilities, stop the crisis and reach agreements that are of interest to all parties involved in this conflict,' Putin said, according to CNN. A possible peace deal is possible in the 'next stages' of negotiations if the US and Russia can 'reach agreements in the area of control over strategic offensive weapons,' the 72-year-old said, referring to nuclear arms. The US and Russia signed a pact in 2011, known as New START, capping strategic nuclear weapons deployments. The deal expires on February 5, 2026. Here are the latest details on Trump and Putin's meeting in AlaskaThe meeting will take place in Anchorage, Alaska at Joint Base said his sitdown with Putin in Alaska will be 'setting the table' for a possible future meeting about the war in Ukraine with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested the US and Russia could reach a deal on nuclear arms Trump estimated Thursday there is a 25% chance that his Alaska summit will met with European world leaders ahead of the meeting between Trump and Putin. New START has been tested by Russia's war in Ukraine and has been on life support since Putin announced Russia would no longer comply with its requirements in February. The treaty limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers. The pact also called for mutual site inspections, which were paused during COVID-19 in 2020 and have not resumed. The Kremlin also indicated they want to bring other topics to the table during Friday's meeting — including economic cooperation — alongside conversations about the war on Ukraine. New START has been tested by Russia's war in Ukraine and has been on life support since Putin announced Russia would no longer comply with its requirements in February. The treaty limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers. The pact also called for mutual site inspections, which were paused during COVID-19 in 2020 and have not resumed. The Kremlin also indicated they want to bring other topics to the table during Friday's meeting — including economic cooperation — alongside conversations about the war on Ukraine. 'Naturally, broader tasks on ensuring peace and security as well as the most pertinent and pressing international and regional issues will be touched upon,' Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said Thursday, per Russian state media site TASS. The Trump-Putin meeting will begin with a one-on-one conversation, with the leaders only flanked by interpreters, at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Ushakov said. The leaders will talk over breakfast and then plan to have a joint press conference. However, Putin — a former KGB agent known as a master manipulator — has repeatedly shown he cannot be trusted. Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with the Russian dictator, accusing him of 'tapping' him along and has railed against his 'b*******.' 'We get a lot of b****** thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,' Trump said last month. 'He's very nice all of the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.' Trump's main goal for Friday's meetings with the Russian leader is to reach a cease-fire deal, but he is 'not very optimistic' the dictator will budge, a US source familiar with the discussion told The Post. The president also mainly plans to listen to Putin's demands to get a clearer picture of how to end the war, the White House has indicated. Putin has reportedly been pushing for Ukraine to give up significant territory Russia has claimed — and not been able to take by force — in order for any lasting peace deal to be reached. Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders on a call Wednesday that a cease-fire was his top priority and said he would not discuss Ukraine territorial concessions, sources said. If no cease-fire agreement is reached, Trump vowed there would be 'severe consequences' for the Kremlin. Zelensky was sidelined for Friday's meeting because it was proposed by Putin himself, the White House said. US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff had originally proposed a trilateral meeting — with Trump, Putin and Zelensky — at the president's request before Putin countered with the one-on-one idea, according to White House sources. As Zelensky will not be present, formal discussions to end the Ukraine war will not take place. Both Russia and the US have signaled that future meetings will be needed to reach a resolution. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov cautioned against trying to predict the outcome of the Friday talks, but said Thursday that 'given that there will be a joint news conference, the president [Putin] will outline the range of agreements and understandings that can be achieved.' With Post Wires Originally published as Putin heaps praise on 'sincere' Donald Trump, hints Russia and US could strike nuclear arms deal
