Armenian voter frustration with major parties could shift Bennelong outcome
Mr Kolokossian said Armenian voters in the electorate are increasingly frustrated with both major parties' supposed failure to recognise the Armenian genocide.
"When you have a swing seat like Benalong and a large Armenian-Australian community where even a few hundred votes could tip the balance, there is an expectation at an election time that on the 110th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, that the prime minister, or for that matter the opposition leader, would use the words Armenian Genocide in their statement, which was delivered to our community only a week ago on the 24th of April," Mr Kolokossian told Sky News Australia.
"The community is rightly frustrated after years of silence, and that frustration is risking the Armenian-Australian community's vote being spread to minor parties.
"So Armenian Australians are rightly quite angry about the decision from both the prime minister and the opposition leader."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
West Australian
9 minutes ago
- West Australian
Live cattle export ban class action claimants launch appeal against Federal Court's June ruling
Claimants in the long-running class action against the Federal Government's 2011 live cattle export ban have launched an appeal, challenging a recent Federal Court ruling that the ban had no long-term impact on export numbers. As reported by ABC's WA Country Hour on August 7, the appeal is focused on the Court's findings regarding the extent of damages suffered by the industry, and the level of compensation being offered by the government. The class action, led by NT-based Brett Cattle Company, is seeking $510 million in compensation plus costs and interest — but only $215 million was offered to claimants by the Federal Government under Anthony Albanese. Class action participant and former Hedland Export Depot owner Paul Brown told the Countryman in June the offered amount was 'gross', 'inadequate', 'paltry', and 'bordering on negligent'. The Federal Government, under former PM Julia Gillard, suspended Australia's live cattle trade to Indonesia for six months after footage was shown on ABC of cattle being mistreated and slaughtered without being stunned. The move left 88,000 cattle bound for international shores stranded, and ground the live cattle export industry to a halt. Australia's pastoral industry has been at war with the Federal Government in the years since, with a class action of 300 cattle producers launched in 2014 in an attempt to claim $510 million in compensation. But Mr Brown said the ban had a devastating effect on Australian pastoralists beyond financial circumstances — he said the amount failed to include any provision for compensation, loss of business, anguish, or stress. The Federal Court sided with the class action in 2020, saying the ban was unlawful, but lead complainant — NT-based Brett Cattle Company — is the only plaintiff to have received any compensation after the Federal Court's finding in 2020. In June, Federal Court Justice Tom Thawley that live cattle exports in 2012 and 2013 were not affected by ban in 2011 — a claim pastoralists have vehemently denied. Figures from Meat and Livestock Australia show Australia exported 521,000 head of live cattle to Indonesia in 2010, 413,000 in 2011, 278,000 in 2012, and 452,000 in 2013.
Sydney Morning Herald
39 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
AI copyright exemption idea has set the robot among the pigeons
The proposal by the Productivity Commission to give internationally owned AI companies exemptions from the Australian Copyright Act so they can mine locally copyrighted work to train artificial intelligence large language models, such as ChatGPT, is an idea whose time has not come. AI is already enjoying a free for all and transforming the way Australians work, learn and play. But the commission's harnessing data and digital technology interim report recommended weakening copyright protections, adding that AI-specific regulation should be a last resort while stressing that data underpinned growth and value in the digital economy and 'a mature data-sharing regime' could add up to $10 billion to Australia's annual economic output. A mounting backlash is growing to halt the runaway technology. Australia's media bosses are directly lobbying Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the threat posed by AI, uniting with authors, musicians and artists to oppose the proposal. Of course, the Herald, published by Nine Entertainment, has a vested interest in this issue: Nine chief executive Matt Stanton took the media's fears directly to Albanese last month, as Labor attempts to rein in digital behemoths against the spectre of retaliation from the Trump administration for countries that regulate US tech giants. Additionally, a letter from Australia's top media firms and creative bodies to Attorney-General Michelle Rowland vowed to fight the erosion of copyright protections. As the arrival of computers and mobile phones illustrated, new technology is a boon for boosters and naysayers. AI has been spruiked as bringing an intellectual revolution as profound as the Enlightenment, but the glow has dimmed: there are reports of its use as a propaganda tool to interfere with US elections and the International Labour Organisation estimated 70 per cent of the tasks done by humans could be done or improved by AI, including 32 per cent of jobs in Australia. Meanwhile, despite Australian media companies taking explicit steps to protect themselves, some of the world's richest men openly continue to ignore moves to control their avarice. ChatGPT owner OpenAI, Perplexity and other artificial intelligence giants are crawling and scraping major Australian news websites tens of millions of times a month and pocketing untold swags of dollars. New figures from Nine Entertainment reveal the sheer number of times OpenAI and its rivals are scraping news outlets to inform their AI products – in the month of June, Nine websites were crawled almost 10 times every second by all AI firms, fuelling OpenAI's rapid rise to a $770 billion valuation. The commission's copyright proposal has enraged others. Midnight Oil frontman and former Labor minister Peter Garrett slammed the commission's recommendation to throw copyright to the wind and allow text and data mining of songs without compensating songwriters. 'The rampant opportunism of big tech aiming to pillage other people's work for their own profit is galling and shameful,' Garrett told News Limited.
Sydney Morning Herald
an hour ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘A very big threat': Australia defends PBS as Trump flags 250% tariffs on medicines
Health Minister Mark Butler is planning to speed up medicines approvals as United States President Donald Trump threatens to put tariffs of up to 250 per cent on pharmaceutical products, which could affect $2 billion worth of Australian exports. Butler said Trump's latest threat would not change the discount Australians received on medicines through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, but revealed he would get advice within days about accelerating the approvals process for new drugs in Australia – a key issue that US pharmaceutical giants have raised with Trump. Speeding up the timeframe for US medicines to land on pharmacy shelves could improve the Australian government's standing with the Trump administration, although it does not deal with the White House's bigger concern that Americans pay more for medicines than citizens of other countries. Trump's anger with what he called 'foreign freeloading nations' prompted him to threaten tariffs of up to 250 per cent on drug imports this week. Butler said it was a 'a very big threat'. 'It's one we're working very hard to engage with the Americans on,' Butler said on Thursday. Loading 'The numbers are jumping around … They were 200 per cent a couple of weeks ago, and now they're 250 per cent potentially. They are very, very big tariffs. 'We are making the case very strongly, but I'm not going to pretend that the US Administration doesn't appear to be pretty serious about this.' Australia's PBS – under which the government subsidises drugs and Australians can buy expensive medicines for a maximum price of $31.60, soon to become $25 – has been brought up repeatedly during Trump's trade wars as US pharmaceutical companies push the president to punish countries that limit their market access.
