Xi and Albanese enlist panda diplomacy, war games unfold and the Trump spectacle dominates everything
As the ABC's Ellie Willcox reported on Friday, there will be no safe anchorage for about 100 nautical miles from Yeppoon north to the Percy Island group during the bigger-than-ever Australian-US military exercise known as Exercise Talisman Sabre.
This year it involves 30,000 military personnel from 19 nations.
The RAAF plane taking Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to Shanghai on Saturday to begin a six-day visit to China will also be steering well clear of Talisman Sabre, presuming it takes the normal flight route. And he will also be likely avoiding the implicit war gaming presumptions contained in the exercise when he's meeting his hosts on a trip which, for all the world, looks like one of those friendly encounters of yore back in the 1990s and early 2000s: It seems there will be talk of tennis competitions and pandas.
But as the US-based website Defense News recently reported, the US Army "plans to conduct a live shot with its Typhon missile system in Australia this summer during the Talisman Sabre exercise, marking the first firing of the long-range strike weapon on foreign soil, according to Major General Frank Lozano, program executive officer for missiles and space".
The Typhon battery, a mid-range capability missile system is described as a "new capability, deemed vital to the US Army's Indo-Pacific strategy".
The US installed another Typhon battery in the Philippines last year with the website reporting the "the mobile, ship-sinking system has remained in the country since then, much to the disapproval of China".
And you could understand why the Chinese might not be thrilled about such a system, given its 500-to-2,000-kilometre range and the coy reference to the US "Indo-Pacific strategy".
For much of the past decade, much discussion in Australia about China has been focused on its surging military spend and the often-undefined threat that some analysts say it represents to Australia.
China's extraordinary development of military capability, as well as its assertive approach in the South China Sea, obviously warrant attention, as do the growing tensions over Taiwan.
This week, Taiwan launched its own, largest-ever military drills, which reportedly included simulated attacks on its command systems and infrastructure ahead of a Chinese invasion, involving some 22,000 troops and new rocket systems.
But just as some specific irritants in the relationship between Australia and China, and much talk about cooperation, will dominate the prime minister's visit, much of the reporting about both China and the region have now fallen victim to the same worldwide trend of the news being utterly dominated by the ever-changing spectacle of the Trump administration.
While the US president's pronouncement that he would impose 50 per cent tariffs on Brazil because of its treatment of former president Jair Bolsonaro grabbed many of the headlines by week's end, analysts were seeing the combination of new tariff announcements on both countries and specific commodities as ones clearly focused either against China directly or designed to try to break the growing Chinese dominance of markets or trade in specific goods.
First there was the announcement of new punitive tariffs on a number of countries in north and south-east Asia, including Japan and South Korea, but also countries like Thailand: all countries with intricately linked economic relationships with China.
There were even tougher tariffs being imposed on "trans-shipped" goods (that is, goods that the US thinks China is trying to sneak out via third countries).
Then there was the announcement on new tariffs on copper.
China is the world's major refiner of copper. The metal is crucial for a whole range of high-tech goods, along with renewables technology. China is racing increasingly ahead of the United States in both fields.
Billionaire mining entrepreneur Robert Friedland told the Financial Times this week that he endorsed the Trump plan because domestic production of the metal was "fundamental to America's national security" (even though many analysts are a bit perplexed about how you boost imports and production by taxing them more heavily).
"What's really going on here is that the US wants the metal to be produced in the US, refined [in the US] — and not just copper", the FT quoted the Ivanhoe Mines founder as saying.
"Copper is paradigm for probably 30 critical metals."
Emphasising the point about catching up on rare earths and critical minerals, it was also announced this week that the Pentagon was making a highly unusual $600 million ($US400m) direct investment in a rare earths producer in southern California.
These are just a couple of the signs of how geo-strategic considerations are now playing out as importantly in trade deals as they are in missile batteries.
It provides some important context for understanding where Australia's relationship with China sits on the eve of the PM's visit.
There's a sense abroad that the world is moving beyond the shock and uncertainty phase of what is emanating out of the United States and proceeding to rewire itself on the presumption that things have just changed and everyone has to get on with it.
The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been meeting in Kuala Lumpur this week and tariffs were dominating talk there, too, with the Straits Times reporting that "in the media centre, journalists were glued to laptops and phones tracing updates on how their countries were handling letters from Washington outlining revised United States tariff rates".
Amid all this noise, the PM has been shifting the language about Australia's relationship with the United States, provoking some fairly hysterical responses in some sections of the media, and warnings from some that the speech in which he shifted would be dimly viewed in Washington, which is more used to an often fawning tone from Australia.
The speech essentially recast the foundations of the ANZUS alliance.
Yes, ANZUS may be "our most important defence and security partnership", the PM said, but one involving "an Australian foreign policy anchored in strategic reality, not bound by tradition".
"Dealing with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be."
"Curtin's famous statement that Australia 'looked to America' was much more than the idea of trading one strategic guarantor for another. Or swapping an alliance with the old world for one with the new", the PM said last week.
"It was a recognition that Australia's fate would be decided in our region."
Both sides have things they want out of the PM's visit.
In China's case it has been a push to incorporate artificial intelligence in a renewed free trade deal and looser foreign investment rules, even as the government tries to end the Chinese lease on the Port of Darwin. The PM has already publicly rebuffed the Chinese ambitions on these two points.
But the state of the world makes perhaps the most fascinating backdrop to meetings which include ones with Premier Li Qiang, President Xi Jinping and chairman Zhao Leji of the National People's Congress in Beijing.
Looming over the relationship is another aspect of the uncertainty coming out of Washington.
The 30-day review of the AUKUS deal by the United States is due about now. The government insists it is all very run of the mill.
But whatever its findings, a mischievous US administration must be just a little tempted to drop the findings while the PM is in China. That would of course require us to be clearly in Washington's focus. Just now, not being there would seem to have a lot going for it.
Laura Tingle is the ABC's Global Affairs Editor.
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ABC News
16 minutes ago
- ABC News
Preacher Wisam Haddad and Islamic State terrorist Youssef Uweinat are targeting the pro-Palestinian movement for recruits
As more than 100,000 people marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge against the Gaza war, a protester climbed above the crowd, his face wrapped, waving a black flag made infamous by Al Qaeda and Islamic State (IS). The image was posted online by Wisam Haddad, a radical Sydney cleric who thrives on baiting the media. "The only flag that counts!" said the post by Mr Haddad, recently identified by the ABC's Four Corners as a spiritual leader of Australia's pro-IS network. Israeli politicians and pro-Israel voices seized on the small presence of the flags at the peaceful August 3 protest, portraying the Palestinian statehood campaign as a Trojan horse for extremism. Mr Haddad's agenda is starker still. The preacher — who also goes by Abu Ousayd, William Haddad and Wissam Haddad — has no interest in a Palestinian state. An ABC investigation reveals how he is working with convicted terrorists to exploit and fracture the pro-Palestinian movement, radicalise young Australians horrified by the war, and feed the global revival of IS. The ABC has identified the man in the photograph as Youssef Uweinat, 27, a convicted IS youth recruiter who once promised suicide attacks and walked free from jail less than two years ago. Uweinat is one of at least two former youth leaders for Mr Haddad's Sydney prayer centre convicted of terrorism offences and now free in the community. Also known as Abu Musa al-Maqdisi, he was released without restriction in 2023 after a court rejected a legal bid to keep him under strict supervision. He had served nearly four years in prison for grooming and encouraging Australian minors to launch attacks while drawing teenagers to Mr Haddad's Al Madina Dawah Centre in Bankstown. Uweinat belonged to an IS cell which was infiltrated by a spy for Australia's intelligence agency ASIO, who recently told Four Corners how members plotted attacks and liaised with jihadist leaders abroad. Uweinat's messages to teenagers, buried in court files, now lay bare Mr Haddad's close ties to the terrorist cell. Video from this month's protest shows Uweinat alongside the hate preacher and later forcefully confronting another demonstrator. The reunion of Uweinat and Mr Haddad underscores a longstanding challenge for Australian authorities. They have monitored Mr Haddad for more than two decades without laying a single terrorism charge, while he hosted a stream of terrorists recruiting young people from his prayer centres and entrenched himself in the global jihad. He is now collaborating with notorious terrorists in Australia and abroad to re-energise his national network, while inspiring a new generation of teenage followers accused of attack plots and hate crimes. ASIO warns IS has revived and renewed its capabilities, lifting the risk of a terrorist attack to "probable" after multiple incidents last year. In the past 18 months, IS has carried out or inspired attacks in Australia, the US and Russia, while European authorities have disrupted multiple plots. The group is also entrenching itself in Afghanistan and Africa and reviving its campaign in Syria. Against that backdrop, Mr Haddad has faced his own setbacks. He was last month found to have breached the Racial Discrimination Act with antisemitic speeches about the Gaza war. NSW Police now say they are seeking legal advice on whether to charge protesters who carried the black and white banners, called Shahada flags, under new national hate-symbols laws, which carry a mandatory minimum 12-month jail term. But the Shahada flags are also a common Islamic emblem. Criminalising their display would be fraught — a move likely to deepen the divisions that Mr Haddad is trying to exploit. To the investigators who arrested Uweinat in 2019, his flag stunt on the Harbour Bridge might have seemed inevitable. That year, they found him circulating doctored images of the IS flag atop other Australian landmarks: Canberra's Parliament House, Sydney Town Hall and even Sydney's Anzac Bridge. At just 21, the apprentice plumber was recruiting boys as "soldiers of the Australian Wilayah (province)", the NSW Supreme Court heard. He drew them into encrypted chat groups, flooded them with gruesome propaganda, urged them to die as martyrs, and coached them to radicalise other minors. According to court documents, some of the propaganda videos showed beheadings and young children training with assault rifles. He also filmed his own: a young child in a school uniform and balaclava reciting praise for IS. Two years later, in 2021, Uweinat convinced a judge he had renounced IS. "Upon my release from custody, I wish to help young Australians turn away from extreme ideology," he read in a contrition letter to the court. Justice Geoffrey Bellew cut his sentence from the maximum 10 years to less than four, citing his "genuine" contrition, renunciation of terrorism, immaturity and an early guilty plea. He cautioned that Uweinat might return to terrorism if reunited with his former network, a risk he expected would likely be managed by strict supervision. That supervision never materialised. Before Uweinat's release in 2023, another judge rejected the federal government's case that he remained an unacceptable terrorism risk, in a decision delivered in closed court. The government failed in its bid for a supervision order, which would have involved sweeping controls over Uweinat's movements, associations, communications and online activity. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the government wanted "Australians to feel safe and to be safe". "The courts decide how long someone should be locked up and there are strict limits on formal supervision orders after someone has been released," Mr Burke said in a written statement. "But our intelligence and security agencies never stop collecting information and our work on deradicalisation and community safety never stops." The ABC has confirmed Uweinat reconnected with Mr Haddad soon after his release. He joined The Dawah Van, Mr Haddad's street-preaching group, which recently lost its charity status after Four Corners exposed its radicalisation of youth. Their reunion is the latest sign Mr Haddad is rebuilding his network with released extremists — including Melbourne's Abdul Nacer Benbrika, who served 18 years for leading a terrorism group, and violent criminal Wassim Fayad, an alleged leader in a deadly Sydney IS cell a decade ago. Video obtained by the ABC shows Uweinat with Mr Haddad at the August 3 protest in Sydney's CBD, before the Harbour Bridge stunt. In another video, posted to X, Uweinat ambushes a protester and wrests away a red Ya Hussein flag. The flag is sacred to the Shiite community, a sect that IS doctrine says should be exterminated, and which has previously been targeted by members of Mr Haddad's circle in Sydney. In the clip, an associate points to the black Shahada flag and tells the protester, "that's the true flag here … brother, you're committing kufr (blasphemy)", before Uweinat moves in and the audio cuts out. Mr Haddad later defended the confrontation online as an act of faith, without naming Uweinat, dismissing criticism that it undermined the pro-Palestinian movement and endangered Shias. Uweinat declined to answer the ABC's questions about the incident, but said his display of the Shahada flag was "not in support of Islamic State". Other footage shows Mr Haddad's followers marching alongside other radical activists waving the Shahada flags and calling for a global caliphate ruled under a hardline vision of Sharia law. That mission leaves no space for a Palestinian state. Mr Haddad dismisses nationalism as heresy, exploiting dismay over Gaza to sow division in the Muslim community and spread his fringe brand of Islam. "The only solution for Palestine is an Islamic one," he said in a lecture last Friday. "No nationalism, tribalism, no borders, no man-made system." He urged his followers to shun Muslim rulers, leaders and prominent sheikhs, describing them as "evil" and blaming them for failing to end the war in Gaza. The message was echoed in a lecture at his Bankstown centre by Abu Ahmad, a preacher who has opened a sister centre in Melbourne with Mr Haddad's backing. The message was echoed in a lecture weeks earlier at his Bankstown centre by Abu Ahmad, a preacher who has opened a sister centre in Melbourne with Mr Haddad's backing. "The Palestinian flag is under my foot," he declared last month. "The only flag that we hold is … the flag of the messenger of Allah (the Shahada flag)." The ABC sent Mr Haddad a list of questions, including whether he was trying to fracture the pro-Palestinian movement, radicalise young people and feed the revival of IS. He sent his own questions in response, including whether the reporter was a "Zionist" and "a leader of a pro genocide movement". He has previously denied being a leader of a pro-IS network. Uweinat's own path shows how Mr Haddad's network preys on the vulnerable, then grooms them to recruit others. The Supreme Court heard he was addicted to cannabis and cocaine from his teens, and by 20 was adrift when he crossed paths in south-west Sydney with a group of street preachers he had met years earlier. Social media posts from the time show him with Street Dawah Bankstown, an offshoot of an international preaching movement that courts have identified as a recruitment arm for terrorist groups in Australia, the UK and Europe. A psychological report said Uweinat was drawn into a circle of extremists through radical lectures and mosque visits, in a "process of brainwashing" that convinced him violent extremism was justified and must be spread. Within months in 2019, he had pledged allegiance to IS and taken the nom de guerre, Abu Musa al-Maqdisi ("Father of Musa, from Jerusalem") — a name that tied him to the jihadist struggle against Israel. By year's end, he was in prison. The ABC understands Mr Haddad installed Uweinat as a youth leader at Al Madina Dawah Centre, promoting events online and helping IS loyalists expand their "brotherhood". "Call out to all the Shabab [young Muslims]!" Uweinat wrote in a since-removed 2019 Facebook post, obtained by the ABC. "Come meet and Join the brothers for some Free Halal [religiously permissible] fun while increasing the brotherhood!" Privately, he created IS chat groups, where he coached teenagers to recruit others online through dawah, or proselytising, the court heard. "Im gonna convert this one kid im tellin ya, so much potential," one teenager wrote to Uweinat on the Telegram platform. "make a snapchat group for dawah," Uweinat replied, "we can give dawah to people that have potential … but only send things about IS." But Uweinat's messages were inconsistent. He posted calls for the slaughter of nonbelievers, while privately telling a teenager not to kill them, insisting "there's no jihad in Australia". The former ASIO agent who spoke to Four Corners, codenamed Marcus, won the trust of Uweinat and fellow IS supporters while posing as a radical imam inside Mr Haddad's network and prayer centre. "They became extremists after they attended Al Madina Dawah Centre and been exposed to the speech and the lessons," he said. "They were very, very keen to support him and support his mosque as much as they can." Recruited from the Middle East, Marcus ran a covert study circle in his home for Uweinat and a cell of IS supporters. The group spread propaganda online, filming their own jihadist content for Instagram accounts called The Forgotten Scrolls and Tawheed Vision. Behind the scenes, some members were in contact with senior terrorists abroad and discussing potential attacks in Australia. Marcus fed the intelligence to ASIO. In mid-2019, police moved in, arresting four young men. By November, Uweinat was panicking that he could be next. "you don't know how much shit were in cuz," he wrote to a teenage boy on Telegram. Despite his fears police were monitoring him, Uweinat let slip that Mr Haddad, known as Abu Ousayd, was connected to the IS cell. "they know we are all linked….me, tfs [The Forgotten Scrolls], tawheedvision, abu ousayd, the boys they got locked up." "Cuz, they know," he added in a voice message. "They know everything about us." The messages added to a file of evidence dating back more than a decade, connecting Mr Haddad to a global web of terrorists — from leaders of jihadist groups to aspiring Australian attackers as young as 13. Uweinat's actions meanwhile increasingly alarmed authorities. Days after his message about Mr Haddad, he shared a Snapchat photo of himself raising a single finger, with the text: "About to go on Istishhadi [a suicide attack]". "To everyone who stayed behind; I urge you to continue to strive in your Jihad and do not stop until you place the flag of Tawheed [the Shahada flag] over the White House!" When police stormed into Uweinat's Sydney home to arrest him the next month, he smashed his phone on the floor, cutting his hand in an attempt to destroy the evidence. Police never charged Uweinat over any plans for an attack, but he was convicted of advocating for acts of terrorism and being a member of IS. Less than two weeks ago, on August 8, another former youth leader from Al Madina Dawah Centre walked free after being sentenced for terrorism in the NSW District Court. Joseph Saadieh, 28, a former construction worker and university student, was once part of the same IS cell, running jihadist Instagram accounts with Uweinat. The pair, who had both dropped out of high school, attended Al Madina Dawah Centre together and bonded over their interest in IS, according to a psychological report tendered in Saadieh's case. When police arrested Saadieh in 2021, they found instructions on his devices for improvised explosives and suicide belts. He was due to stand trial for IS membership, but the charge was dropped when he pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of providing support to the group by intentionally associating with Uweinat. Judge Mark Williams SC sentenced Saadieh to 12 months' jail, but released him immediately, noting that his time in custody and under strict bail conditions had already exceeded the maximum three-year penalty. While on bail, Saadieh had lived under virtual house arrest for more than four years, barred from phones and the internet, and attending a deradicalisation program. His stringent conditions also banned contact with Mr Haddad and other Al Madina Dawah Centre leaders, and visits to landmarks including the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The psychological report warned that Saadieh might return to terrorism "if he is re-exposed to similar social circles or networks", contacts he insisted he would only re-engage with if they abandoned IS. His offence was too minor for him to be eligible for a supervision order. For now, he is free to decide whether to return to the fold. In a statement, the Home Affairs Department said it had a "range of measures that can be considered to manage Australians who pose a terrorism risk", including voluntary disengagement programs. In total, six members of the Sydney cell have been convicted of crimes, including terrorism offences. The question is whether authorities can contain Mr Haddad's influence before another wave of terrorism takes hold.
ABC News
16 minutes ago
- ABC News
Childcare advocates say Victorian report highlights need for federal government to 'do the heavy lifting' to improve sector
Victoria's Rapid Child Safety Review has been received well by the early childhood sector and child safety advocates, but the overwhelming response suggests it speaks to the need for unified reforms on a federal level. The review was commissioned after more than 70 charges of child abuse were laid against a former Melbourne childcare worker in July and outlined 22 recommendations to make the childcare sector safer. The Victorian government said it had accepted all recommendations and would work to adopt them through an immediate $42 million funding boost, but the report also called for urgent action to take place nationally. Industry bodies agree that the federal government needs to do the heavy lifting when it comes to improving child safety. The review's recommendations include establishing a new independent early childhood education and care regulator, increasing the volume and frequency of unannounced compliance visits, and allowing the immediate suspension of Working With Children Checks (WWCC). The changes follow two ABC investigations that recently uncovered separate cases where male educators who were sacked by childcare operators and banned from the sector still had active WWCCs at the time of writing. National Children's Commissioner Anne Hollonds said she was "hugely relieved" at the report's findings, but said previous barriers to reforming the sector needed to be looked at. "There's been previous royal commissions and inquiries and reviews and these recommendations have been sitting on a shelf until now," Ms Hollonds said. "There are significant barriers … and I think if we don't identify those barriers, name them, and work out how to overcome them, we might find ourselves in a similar position in the future." In 2022, the Victorian Ombudsman recommended the state urgently change its laws after a youth worker was cleared to work with children despite facing sexual offence allegations. Five years before that, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse laid out 189 recommendations aimed at making institutions safer for children, including through nationalising WWCC. But Professor Michael Salter from UNSW said it was important to recognise that the royal commission did not focus on the early childhood sector. "People might think that we've gone through that process of interrogating the issues in early child care, but we haven't," he said. "This is the moment of reckoning to think really seriously about the very specific child protection challenges." Several of the review's recommendations are outside the Victorian government's scope and correspond to federal action. These include a Commonwealth-led rethink of the national system, the establishment of a National Early Childhood Reform Commission, creating a National Early Childhood Worker Register, standardising Working With Children Checks, and improving information sharing and training standards for childcare workers, and rethinking the market-driven childcare centre model. While committing to a child safety overhaul on Wednesday, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan said it was a "national system that required a national response". Professor Salter said it was important that states and territories recognised the national picture. "We want to make sure we're making the same determinations in each state and territory, we're not having offenders move between states or finding loopholes as they move," he said. "Funding for the early childhood sector is a Commonwealth matter and the Commonwealth really needs to show leadership here, and that is going to come with budget implications, but governments are really going to need to face the reality that a high-quality, safe childcare sector is not necessarily a cheap childcare sector. The Victorian government has also urged its federal counterparts to enshrine the "safety, rights and best interests" of children in national law. This would make them the "paramount consideration" for "staff in services, managers, service providers, their owners, funders and board members". The children's commissioner said this recommendation was "game-changing". "The system … has been geared towards protecting adults, it's been geared towards protecting the administrative needs of governments, and towards protecting providers — not protecting children," Ms Hollonds said. Organisations including Bravehearts, the Australian Education Union, the Australian Childhood Foundation, the Commission for Children and Young People, and The Front Project have welcomed the Child Safety Review, but say government action is needed to back it up. Amanda's* (name changed for privacy reasons) daughters attended the Point Cook childcare centre where alleged sex offender Joshua Brown worked. She said screening of childcare employees had to go beyond the WWCC system, regardless of whether it becomes nationally standardised. "If Working with Children Checks is all they require in child care, that blows my mind," Amanda said. "They should be doing full police checks on staff in centres." As a parent, she said she wanted to see a greater push from authorities to have CCTV cameras in childcare centres across the country, despite pushback over privacy provisions. "I find that an easy cop-out, because it would obviously cost the industry a lot of money to install all the cameras, but from where I sit, childcare centres do pretty well for themselves," she said. "So if you've got to install cameras to ensure the safety of children, it's a small price to pay." One of the review's recommendations was to have a national trial of CCTV in early childhood education and care settings as a monitoring and investigative tool. Childcare giants have previously said such a program would require government funding to cover "extremely high" installation costs. But Wednesday's report also found providers were prioritising profits over children's safety, with regulatory issues more prominent in the for-profit sector. The state review was handed down days before education ministers from across Australia meet to discuss child safety. The meeting, scheduled for Friday, is expected to cover accelerating a national register of workers, the role of CCTV in childcare centres, and mandatory child safety training. Federal education minister Jason Clare was contacted for comment.
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
Who is Josh Willie, new leader of Tasmanian Labor, tasked with trying to engineer a comeback?
Joshua Barton Willie, a 41-year-old former primary school teacher, is the new leader of Tasmanian Labor. Mr Willie, from Labor's left faction, became leader after a party meeting on Wednesday — the day after former leader Dean Winter led a failed no-confidence motion in Premier Jeremy Rockliff's Liberal government. Mr Willie did not front the media after becoming leader — instead issuing a press release thanking Mr Winter for his service. "It is a great honour to be elected leader of the Tasmanian Labor Party," he said. The Tasmanian Labor Party spent the majority of Wednesday locked in leadership discussions, with Mr Willie emerging as elected leader, and Janie Finlay his deputy, with both appointments unopposed. The party's dominant left faction had earlier that day held a meeting where Mr Willie won a ballot against fellow Clark MP Ella Haddad to become the left's leadership candidate. Labor has spent 11 years in Opposition, and at the last election experienced its worst-ever result in the state with just 26 per cent of the primary vote. Mr Willie's profile on the Tasmanian Labor page describes him as "a proud University of Tasmania alumnus, holding a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Political Science and Journalism and a Bachelor of Teaching". Married with three young children, Mr Willie was a primary school teacher in Hobart's northern suburbs before being elected as the Labor member for Elwick in the Tasmanian Legislative Council, serving from May 2016 to February 2024. At the 2024 state election, Mr Willie stood for the House of Assembly in the Hobart metropolitan seat of Clark and was successful. In the previous government he served as Labor's Shadow Treasurer, Shadow Minister for Cost of Living and Shadow Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. At his inaugural speech to Tasmania's lower house in May 2024, Mr Willie began with an Acknowledgement of Country, followed by an admission his move from the upper house might be seen by some as "moving out of the frying pan and into the fire". Mr Willie spoke of his grandparents from the electorate of Bass, "Alf and Mary", who ran a 132-year-old "fourth-generation" family engineering business. "I am a son, a brother, a husband, a father, a teacher, a member of parliament and always a learner. I approach every day, wanting to make a difference. That is how I came to be here." In 2017, Mr Willie wrote for NewsCorp about the pain of losing his father Mike and advocated for people to sign up for organ and tissue donation, which his father had done after a family conversation. Mr Willie comes from a family of teachers and is an advocate for public education. Both of his parents trained as teachers. "I know education is a tool of social justice and a vehicle for opportunity," he has said. "Tasmanians, in our regions, need to have equal access to opportunity, equal access to education and skills and training to make their communities stronger. Mr Willie said he chose teaching as a career path "to make a difference" in communities, and saw politics as an extension of that goal. In his maiden speech as an MLC, Mr Willie said his middle name "Barton" was a family name initially chosen by his great‑great‑grandmother for her son in honour of Australia's first prime minister, Edmund Barton. "I do not think my parents could ever imagine … I would end up in parliament myself," he said at the time.
