
BREAKING NEWS Anthony Albanese delivers an Acknowledgement of Country before one of his final speeches before the election
Anthony Albanese has begun one of his final election pitches by delivering an Acknowledgement of Country before his National Press Club of Australia address.
His acknowledgement to traditional owners of the land comes as a debate erupts over the practice, days after Bunurong-Gunditjmara man Uncle Mark Brown was booed and jeered on Anzac Day while performing a Welcome To Country.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Daily Mail
22 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Grim warning that Australia is being 'hijacked' by union bosses - as a national strike now looms that will bring the country to a grinding halt
Australians are being warned unions will use crippling national strikes next year to hijack supply chains which could stoke inflation under Labor's new workplace laws. Anthony Albanese 's Secure Jobs Better Pay Act, introduced in 2022 during Labor's first term, has revived multi-employer bargaining, handing power back to unions. It allows wage rises in one workplace to be replicated across an industry without the need for separate enterprise negotiations. But unions are already warning of potential coordinated strike action at 200 firms including airlines, supermarkets and haulage companies to leverage big pay deals. Analysts fear it could result in inflation-busting wage rises, which could result in soaring costs for consumers if productivity fails to keep pace with the increases. Treasurer Jim Chalmers is now planning to host a Productivity Summit at Parliament House in Canberra later this year in a bid to avoid an economic output crisis. But new Opposition workplace relations spokesman Tim Wilson has warned union chiefs will use multi-employer bargaining to bring industrial chaos to Australia. 'The Transport Workers Union will use multi-employer bargaining to hijack supply chains, squeeze businesses and pass on higher costs to customers,' he told Daily Mail Australia. 'So long as Albanese's multi-employer bargaining remains in place, Australian customers will continue to pay more so unions can leverage their power.' Wilson last month narrowly won back the Melbourne bayside electorate of Goldstein from former Teal MP Zoe Daniel and was parachuted back onto the Opposition frontbench by Coalition leader, Sussan Ley. But he warned Labor's landslide re-election will now embolden unions to cripple Australia economically for the next three years. 'The only solution to stop unions pushing up costs on Australians is to find a better balance at the election,' he said. 'But now the Albanese government has been re-elected, Australians should expect more industrial action and higher costs until we see a change of government.' TWU national secretary Michael Kaine last month predicted that 200 enterprise agreements expiring in 2026 will be an opportunity to launch widespread strikes. 'Make no mistake – this will be the largest co-ordinated industrial campaign in Australian transport history,' Kaine told the TWU's national conference in Brisbane in May. 'This alignment of agreements isn't accidental. It's been carefully orchestrated to maximise our collective bargaining power.' Workers are allowed to strike without fear of being sacked during enterprise bargaining negotiations, under provisions of the Fair Work Act of 2009 introduced by a Labor government. Enterprise agreements expire next year at airlines Qantas and Virgin Australia, logistics companies Linfox and Toll, Amazon, supermarket chain Aldi, construction materials company Boral, waste disposal chain Cleanaway and airport ground handling firm Swissport. Kaine, whose union is affiliated with the Labor Party, had vowed to shut down Australia's transport sector. 'We are prepared to shut down Australian transport,' he said. 'There will be disruption. It will be significant. It will be coordinated. And it will be effective.' Albanese tried to sound conciliatory on Tuesday, emphasising that unions only thrived when private-sector employers were successful. 'Well, we're a Labor government, we support unions existing and some of the commentators prefer that unions didn't exist,' he told the National Press Club on Tuesday. 'That's the truth. But we will always respect both the role of business and the role of unions. 'And one of the things that I say is that there are common interests that – I say this to unions as well: you don't get union members unless you've got successful employers. It's the private sector that drives an economy.' Output at Australian workplaces is going backwards with productivity plunging by one per cent in the year to March. Gross domestic product per capita shrunk in the March quarter, threatening to revive a per capita recession that had persisted from early 2023 until the September quarter of 2024.


Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
The major question many Aussies want answered as Albo hands out $5BILLION to foreign countries: Here's where your cash went
The Australian government is facing calls to boost its foreign aid funding, despite sending over $5 billion overseas. Treasurer Jim Chalmers revealed in the March budget that Australia's official development assistance - the money it sends to foreign nations - would exceed the $5billion mark for the first time in ten years. Three-quarters of that funding - $2.2billion - went to nations in the Indo-Pacific, as the government attempts to counter China 's growing influence in the region. Foreign Minister Penny Wong said at the time that increase in funding was designed to 'central to ensuring stability and security of our region'. 'In these uncertain times, we are making sure Australia's development assistance is going to the Pacific and Southeast Asia, where Australia's interests are most at stake,' she added. The $2.2billion is flowing to projects supporting infrastructure, connectivity, tourism, trade, banking and labour mobility in the region. Elsewhere, Papa New Guinea, which will also receive $600million over ten years for a new professional rugby league team, is the largest recipient in 2025-26 with $707million in aid. Indonesia received Australia's second-largest sum with $351.4million. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was keen to strengthen the relationship with Indonesia when he travelled to Jakarta on his first official visit since being re-elected on May 3. This keenness was underlined when Indonesia President Prabowo Subianto rang Albanese to congratulate him on his landslide victory. 'I have a request for you, and I want you to say yes,' Albanese told his counterpart. 'I want Indonesia to be my first visit. Not Washington, not Beijing, not anywhere else.' The Solomon Islands came third with just shy of $171million, Timor-Leste fourth with almost $136million and the Philippines fifth with $124.8million. Despite the $135.8million increase in overseas aid in the last financial year, Lowy Institute Research Associate Grace Stanhope has called on the Albanese administration to do more. 'Currently, Australia spends 0.18 per cent of gross national income on aid – barely a quarter of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) target of 0.7 per cent,' Ms Stanhope wrote for The Interpreter. She added: 'Ultimately, there's no escaping that Australia's aid budget is too low, threatening Australia's standing as a global citizen.' Just 0.65 per cent of federal government spending currently goes on overseas aid. Australia's generosity has decreased over time. For example, in 2015 Australia was ranked the 14th most generous country in terms of overseas aid, contributing around 0.29 per cent of gross national income (GNI), Whereas in 2024, its ranking had slipped to 18th, with just 0.19 per cent of GNI going towards overseas aid, according to the Australian Aid Tracker. This situation is unlikely to improve any time soon, as Ms Stanhope notes 'there is little political appetite to meaningfully scale up' overseas aid spending. 'Labor's first term promise of an aid program rebuild went largely unmet,' she added. This is against a global backdrop that has seen countries such as the US, UK, France and Germany all drastically reduce their overseas development assistance. Many Australians were frustrated about billions of dollars being sent overseas while the country faces its own challenges. 'How about aiding Australia first,' one said on social media. 'I find it funny that not one politician has asked me if they can use my money to send overseas after all it has come from my pay packet,' a second added. 'Five billion he could spend on electricity bills for his own people,' another said. 'Imagine if that was added to our defence budget - to buy more defence capability, to defend Australia perhaps,' a third said. Despite sending money overseas, Australia does not receive foreign aid from other countries. 'So we're nearly a trillion dollars in debt and giving five billion overseas, does that mean we borrow money to give it away,' one said.


Daily Mail
4 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Anthony Albanese called out for missing a crucial detail about the rubber bullet shooting of an Aussie reporter in the LA riots
Anthony Albanese has been called out for getting a crucial detail wrong about an Australian reporter shot with a rubber bullet in the Los Angeles riots. US correspondent for Nine Lauren Tomasi was performing a live cross about the mass protests in the city on Sunday evening, local time, when a police officer could be seen levelling a gun at her in the background. The officer opened fire at close range, while Tomasi doubled over in pain. Nine later confirmed she was 'left sore but otherwise unharmed' by the shot. The apparently deliberate shooting sparked global headlines and criticism of heavy-handed tactics by the LAPD. Anthony Albanese condemned the 'targeted' incident on Wednesday, describing Tomasi as 'clearly identified as media' in Nine's footage. 'There's no ambiguity. She wasn't wearing a trackie, she was wearing a helmet and something that identified her as media,' Albanese told the National Press Club. But Aussies were quick to hit back at the prime minister's comments, pointing out that Tomasi had not been wearing a helmet or any clothing that identified her as a Nine reporter at the time of the shooting. 'Albo is lying about the situation. She wasn't wearing anything to protect herself or identify herself,' one said. 'So who's fault is it then if she's not wearing a helmet or vest and in the middle of a protest?' a second asked. Another agreed that Tomasi was 'clearly not identified as media'. 'She put herself in a dangerous position. Common sense seems to be lost by some.' 'Isn't that what journalists do to show what's happening, rather than sit in a sanitised white house press room?' another said. 'If she's not identified as a journalist then she leaves herself open to being just another blogger and an unofficial news source and part of the protest not following direct orders from the law enforcement,' a fifth said. Another Aussie suggested police might have mistaken Tomasi for a 'social media influencer'. But some said it should have been obvious that Tomasi was a reporter, given that she was holding a microphone and being filmed by a cameraman. Australian diplomats have raised the incident with their US counterparts, and Albanese has not ruled out raising it when he meets Donald Trump next week on the sidelines of the G7 Summit in Canada. A day after Tomasi was shot with the rubber bullet, an ABC correspondent was tear-gassed while also reporting on the riots. Protesters in LA are marching against Trump's crackdown on illegal migrants and raids by ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Horrifying scenes showed cars erupting into flames as rioters created blockades to grind Downtown Los Angeles to a complete halt. On Monday local time (Tuesday AEST), Trump sent 700 marines to join 2,000 of national guard troops in the city. He also threatened to arrest California's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, for resisting the federal crackdown.