Legal challenge against Woodside extension expected
The federal government is expected to face a legal challenge on the approval of Woodside Energy's North West Shelf gas plant extension.
Environmental and Indigenous activists say the gas plant threatens the erosion of rock art in the area.
Labor has agreed to give "Save Our Songlines" founder Raelene Cooper at least three days' notice before formal approval of the project.
The commitment will give the traditional custodians an opportunity to file an injunction against the decision.
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The Age
4 hours ago
- The Age
‘Progressive patriot' prime minister faces his call to arms
'In today's Australia, the new default should be that patriotism is a love of country that is democratic and egalitarian. It is something that includes those of different races and backgrounds,' he wrote in this masthead a couple of weeks ago. 'With his political authority unquestioned, Albanese has an opportunity to craft a nation-building agenda. The significance is more than just national. At the moment, parties of the centre-left are struggling to find compelling alternatives to Trumpist populism.' Albanese's defiance of America doesn't come out of nowhere. It rings a Labor bell. It resonates with the decision by Labor's celebrated wartime leader, John Curtin, to defy Australia's great and powerful friend of his time, Britain. 'I'm conscious about the leadership of John Curtin, choosing to stand up to Winston Churchill and say, 'No, I'm bringing the Australian troops home to defend our own continent, we're not going to just let it go',' Albanese said last year as he prepared to walk the Kokoda Track, where Australia and Papua New Guinea halted Imperial Japan's southward march of conquest in World War II. Defiance of allies is one thing. Defeat of the enemy is another. In a moment of truth-telling, the Chief of the Defence Force, Admiral David Johnston, this week said that Australia now had to plan to wage war from its own continental territory rather than preparing for war in far-off locations. 'We are having to reconsider Australia as a homeland from which we will conduct combat operations,' Johnston told a conference held by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. 'That is a very different way – almost since the Second World War – of how we think of national resilience and preparedness. We may need to operate and conduct combat operations from this country.' He didn't spell it out, but he's evidently contemplating the possibility that China will cut off Australia's seaborne supply routes, either because it's waging war in the Taiwan Strait or South China Sea, or because it's seeking to coerce Australia. 'The chief of the defence force is speaking truth,' says Professor Peter Dean, co-author of the government's Defence Strategic Review, now at the US Studies Centre at Sydney University. 'There's a line in the Defence Strategic Review that most people overlook – it talks about 'the defence of Australia against potential threats arising from major power competition, including the prospect of conflict'. And there's only one major power posing a threat in our region.' History accelerates week by week. Trump, chaos factory, wantonly discards America's unique sources of power and abuses its allies. China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin are emboldened, seeing America's credibility crumbling. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, alarmed at the rising risks, this week declared a campaign to make Britain 'battle ready' to 'face down Russian aggression'. Loading Starmer plans to enlarge the army, commission up to a dozen new nuclear-powered submarines jointly built with Australia under AUKUS, build six new munitions factories, manufacture 7000 long-range weapons, renew the nuclear warheads on Britain's strategic missiles, and put new emphasis on drones and cyberwar as war evolves daily on the battlefields of Ukraine. Starmer intends to increase defence outlays to the equivalent of 2.5 per cent of GDP with an eventual target of 3 per cent. Ukraine's impressive drone strike on Russia's bombers this week knocked out a third of Moscow's force, with AI guiding the drones to their targets. The Australian retired major-general Mick Ryan observes that Ukraine and Russia are upgrading and adapting drone warfare weekly. 'The Australian government has worked hard to ignore these hard-earned lessons and these cheaper military solutions,' he wrote scathingly in this masthead this week, 'while building a dense bureaucracy in Canberra that innovative drone-makers in Australia cannot penetrate in any reasonable amount of time.' At the same time, the FBI charged two Chinese researchers with attempting to smuggle a toxic fungus into the US. It's banned because it can cause mass destruction of crops. A potential bioweapon, in other words. What would John Curtin do today? 'Curtin, like Albanese, was from the left of the Labor Party,' says Dean. 'He was not an internationalist, he was very domestic focused.' Indeed, he was an avowed Marxist who believed that capitalism was in its late phase and bound to fail, leading to world peace. He abandoned his idealism when confronted by the reality of World War II. 'He realised that a leader has to lead for his times. He had to bend his interests from the domestic sphere to the international.' Curtin famously wrote that, after Britain's 'impregnable fortress' of Singapore fell to the Japanese in just a few days, Australia looked to America as its great and powerful friend. 'Albanese can't repeat that,' observes Dean, 'because there's no one else to turn to.' 'A modern John Curtin,' says the head of the National Security College at ANU, Rory Medcalf, 'would take account of the strategic risk facing the unique multicultural democratic experiment of Australia. He'd unite the community and bring the trade unions, industry, the states and territories together in a national effort. 'It's certainly not about beating the drums of war, but we do need a much more open conversation about national preparedness. Australia might be directly involved in war, but, even if we aren't, we will be affected indirectly [by war to our north] because of risks to our fuel security, risks to the normal functioning of the economy and risks to the cohesion of our society. Is there scope to use national cabinet' – which includes the states and territories – 'to talk about these issues?' And the defence budget? Albanese is dismissive of calls to peg spending by set percentages of GDP. Apply that to any other area of the budget and you'd be laughed out of the room. The prime minister prefers to decide on capability that's needed, then to fund it accordingly. How big a gun do you need, then find money to pay for it. Medcalf endorses this approach of deciding capability before funding, but says that risk should come before both. 'And if you look at risk first, it will push spending well above 2 per cent of GDP and much closer to 3 or 4 per cent.' Regardless of what the Americans say or do. Do they turn out to be dependable but demanding? Or uselessly absent? 'Australia will need to spend more either way,' says Medcalf. 'The only future where we don't need to increase our security investment is one where we accept greatly reduced sovereignty in a China-dominated region.'
Sky News AU
5 hours ago
- Sky News AU
Victorian Labor government to spend $81 million on economic and policy advice
Victoria Shadow Treasurer James Newbury discusses the prediction of the Victorian Labor government to spend $81 million in the current budget on economic and policy advice. 'The government is hiring an executive on $220,000 a day,' Mr Newbury told Sky News host Steve Price. 'For $81 million, I don't think we're getting very good advice because the government doesn't seem to be getting any better. 'What's this $81 million going towards?'
Sydney Morning Herald
5 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Muslim Vote to support candidates in NSW, Victorian elections
A pro-Palestine political movement that failed to win a seat at the May federal election has vowed to push on and support candidates for the upcoming Victorian and NSW state elections. The Muslim Vote endorsed independent candidates in three Labor-held seats – Watson and Blaxland in western Sydney and Calwell in Melbourne's north-west. Its greatest success was in Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke's seat of Watson, where independent Ziad Basyouny was the second-most popular candidate on a two-candidate preferred basis. Burke, who was accused of 'vote buying' after holding pre-election mass citizenship ceremonies in Sydney's culturally diverse western suburbs, still comfortably won the seat, receiving 66 per cent of the vote after preferences were distributed. In Education Minister Jason Clare's seat of Blaxland, Ahmed Ouf won 18.76 per cent of first preferences, but the Liberal candidate was second-preferred. In Calwell, Samim Moslih only garnered 6.85 per cent of first preferences. Despite failing to win a seat, Muslim Vote convenor Sheikh Wesam Charkawi said the results were a 'significant step' that 'demonstrated the model works'. In each seat, the independent campaign ate into both Labor and the Liberals' first preference vote distribution from the 2022 federal election. 'One form of success in the political arena is unseating the sitting minister. Another form is winning hearts and minds of the masses, setting the foundations for future challenges,' Charkawi said. 'We've had an avalanche of people reach out to us post-election, either to be candidates or to support our work ... The community isn't backing down. We all want to continue.'
