‘Turn your back on it': Pauline Hanson calls out Welcome to Country ‘rubbish'
One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson tells Australians to 'turn your back' on the Welcome to Country ceremonies.
'Turn your back on it as I do every time I am in parliament and they do a Welcome to Country,' Ms Hanson said.
'I am not going to put up with this rubbish.'
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Sky News AU
3 hours ago
- Sky News AU
Street sweeper Shaun Turner says he speaks for 'silent majority' after questioning use of Acknowledgement to Country during Darebin Council work meeting
The Melbourne council street sweeper sacked over questioning the use of an Acknowledgement to Country before a work meeting has argued the ceremonies are being overdone and that he had to take a stand for the "silent majority". Shaun Turner, 60, last week won his unfair dismissal case against Darebin Council after he was let go when he asked why the ritual was being introduced at a toolbox meeting. He had argued in the meeting "people who have worn the uniform and fought" for Australia are the ones that should be thanked, later telling councillors he did not have to be "welcomed into my own country" and that the use of it was "getting out of hand". The council alleged Mr Turner said Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people "do not deserve an acknowledgement at the start of meetings" in a disrespectful way. But the Fair Work Commission found Mr Turner's way of expression was not aggressive, as claimed by the council, and that his opinion did not warrant being sacked. Speaking to The Australian, who first reported the story, the father-of-three said the use of Acknowledgement to Country in small meetings was "pushing it too far". Mr Turner doubled down on previous remarks that the ceremony should be reserved for special occasions and foreign dignitaries when they visit the country. "I think the silent majority who won't just say anything, but they probably all think the same way but they don't want to upset the apple cart," he said. Asked if Australia has become "too politically correct", the council worker said "it's all gone too far the other way and people have just had enough now". 'I just feel like if you were a pale, stale male you can't go to work now and have a laugh. If me and you are having a laugh, and he (a third person) takes it to management, well, next minute we're getting a warning for not being inclusive," he said. Mr Turner, who voted for the Liberal Party at the federal election, said often people jump jump to accusations of racism if they question the Welcome to Country. But he insisted he has "no problem with Aboriginal people". The Fair Work Commission is still considering whether the worker from Research, northeast of Melbourne's outskirts, should be compensated or be given his job back. Mr Turner is unsure whether he wants to continue in the role again due to a painful shoulder condition that had left him on WorkCover prior to being sacked. He would consider being redeployed to another role and/or compensation. Overnight, Senator Pauline Hanson praised Mr Turner for speaking his mind. "That council worker, good on him for actually fighting back over it and questioning it. And yet he's lost his job. He's won it in the courts and I hope that they actually apologise to him and offer his job back," Senator Hanson told Sky News' Danica and James. It comes after a poll from the Institute of Public Affairs over the weekend found 56 per cent of people surveyed say Welcome to Country Ceremonies are divisive.
Sky News AU
4 hours ago
- Sky News AU
ABC journalist Patricia Karvelas pushes Liberal Party to adopt gender quotas as public broadcaster pledges impartiality
Star ABC journalist Patricia Karvelas has called on the Liberal Party to impose controversial gender quotas or face electoral backlash despite the public broadcaster's renewed promise to uphold editorial impartiality. Ms Karvelas called for gender quotas in a fiery opinion piece on Monday, claiming voters would 'turn their backs' on the Liberal Party if it refused. ABC journalists are bound by strict impartiality policies which 'requires news and information to be gathered and presented with due impartiality'. They are also forbidden from 'unduly' favouring 'one perspective over another'. However, these rules didn't stop the ABC's star reporter from attacking the Liberal Party's refusal to establish gender quotas. 'Vibes don't get women elected, and if women are not at the table in large numbers Australian voters will continue to turn their backs on the Liberal Party,' she wrote, in a scathing opinion piece, published by the ABC on Monday. She compared the Liberal Party's failure to implement gender quotas to an inability to climb a 'cultural mountain'. 'The issue of gender quotas is the one philosophical and cultural mountain that the Liberal Party has never been prepared to climb. And even by the party's own reckoning, it is failing,' she said. 'Beyond the hard arithmetic of imposing quotas, every other strategy is little more than vibes and positive thinking.' Ms Karvelas also attacked former Liberal Leader Peter Dutton for refusing to appear before the National Press Club. 'Opposition Leader Sussan Ley is approaching it as if there's a giant sign above her head that screams, 'I'm not Peter Dutton',' she wrote. 'Her speech at the National Press Club this week was loaded with hints that fit this thesis 'Even the decision to address the National Press Club itself — a forum Dutton viewed as a space of the Canberra journalistic elite and snubbed consistently — was a signal.' Ms Karvelas also took aim at Australians on social media who deemed gender quotas and regular Welcome to Country speeches 'woke', dismissing the critics as 'right wing'. 'If you swim in right wing algorithms — especially on X — you'll see that all of these choices by Ley are being mocked as symbols of 'Labor Party-light',' she wrote. 'In the subterranean online world Ley's leadership is being painted as too 'woke'.' She even warned Ley's leadership could be under threat by those in the Liberal Party who agreed with the criticism. 'Ley's job over the next year is fraught with danger,' Ms Karvelas wrote. 'She might be given a period of brief peace but most Liberals you speak to privately concede that it will be difficult to keep that peace for the entire term.' Ms Ley suggested she was open to gender quotas at her National Press Club address, quickly before shadow defence minister and former leadership rival Angus Taylor rejected the proposition. "If some state divisions choose to implement quotas, that is fine. If others don't, that is also fine," she said. It comes after revealed the extraordinary lengths ABC journalists were forced to go through in order to achieve radical race, gender and disability targets. The quotas — which included specific targets for women, disabled people and culturally diverse individuals — prompted criticism of the ABC. Following the public broadcaster's high-profile court loss to Antoinette Lattouf, the ABC managing director doubled down on the ABC's commitment to impartiality. 'I wish to stress the particular and fundamental obligations the ABC and its employees have to be independent and impartial in our work,' he said in a statement. Ms Ley has suggested that gender quotas could be a good idea if state divisions of the party wanted to pursue them. However, Mr Taylor has publicly rejected quotas, arguing they would 'subvert democracy'. 'I've never been a believer in quotas to achieve that, but it's clear we have to take proactive action to achieve (female representation),' he told Sky News on Sunday.
The Advertiser
4 hours ago
- The Advertiser
Sussan Ley can be a circuit-breaker ... if the Libs allow her to be
Long the overlooked understudy, Sussan Ley remains cautiously Delphic about her plans to rebuild the Liberal Party. But don't let that fool you. For years, she's been watching and learning from the "big beasts" of conservative certainty: Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton - men "destined to rule". These chaps are now all gone from politics - each, in the end, having made more opponents than supporters. Categorically, Ley is not "of" this phenotype. Which is why her plans to resuscitate the flatlining party begin with what not to say when communicating internally with MPs and externally with voters. Self-evidently, Ley can be a circuit-breaker ... if they allow her to be. Already, her vanquished rival, Angus Taylor is publicly opposing the suggestion of rule changes to select women for winnable seats. He calls affirmative action "undemocratic" knowing full well how that cruels her pitch. Some people might make the same observation about Liberal factions. Or the enforcement of shadow cabinet solidarity. Some might even say that opposing quotas is a strange mound to die on for "liberals" after ascending the mountainous debt of government-funded-and-operated nuclear power. In any event, it is hard to recall an instance when Dutton was so publicly countermanded. Despite a margin of just four votes over Taylor in last month's leadership ballot, what Ley envisions simply must be bold - closer to a rebuild than a renovation - albeit, while keeping the heritage-listed facade - let's call it "mid-century Menzies"? For all that, Ley knows she must hasten slowly. Reading between the lines, she wants to get back to basics, steer back to the mainstream. This would involve concentrating political contest around the traditional differences with Labor over managerial competence, budget and economic discipline, defence and national security, business deregulation and aspiration. Her "sealed section" might also include an end to the climate wars and the formal adoption of quotas to get women in Parliament - about which she is "agnostic". She describes all this as "meeting Australians where they are", which sounds as harmless as it does overdue. But for a punchy party addicted to the sugar-hit gratifications of culture wars, it is a correction likely to adduce plenty of Trumpian malcontents. On the plus side, Ley has a bona fide crisis to fix. The Coalition she has inherited needs a 75 per cent increase in seats to reach a majority in 2028. And virtually all of those gains must come in the cities, where the anti-woke, anti-renewables and anti-metro vibes from Dutton and the Nationals have basically killed the brand. "We didn't just lose, we got smashed, totally smashed," Ley told the National Press Club on Wednesday. "Over two elections, the Coalition has lost 33 seats in the House of Representatives. We've lost eight seats in the Senate. "Our primary vote has fallen by more than 9 per cent in the House. Our two-party-preferred vote is down more than 6 per cent, and we now hold just two of 43 inner-metro seats and seven of 45 outer-metro seats." Take that! Simply by acknowledging the scale of her party's descent, Ley showed more grit and empiricism than Dutton ever did. The "hardman" drafted unopposed after Morrison surrendered six Liberal jewels to female community candidates in 2022, had preferred to revile rather than resolve the "gender-quake" that had just levelled his party's blue-ribbon heartlands. Morrison had scoffed at the "cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of the inner-cities," but instead of disowning such bone-headed insults, Dutton doubled down, never hiding his contempt for the teals and for their voters. It was a declaration of war, with women generally and with the affluent Australians on whom the Liberal Party was built. Yet nobody in the party room (Ley included) spoke up at the time. MORE MARK KENNY: In her first month as leader, however, Ley has already done more soul-searching and more listening than her predecessors undertook in eight years. In the aftermath of a thrashing, she prefers John Howard's folksy wisdom that the Australian voters got it right. Thus, she says openly that a Liberal majority requires some or all of the teal seats. That Ley's was the first Press Club address by a Liberal leader in three years simply underscored what an odd, divisive unit Dutton had been. That it was the first address to the club by a female opposition leader (from either side) also made it historic. Of course, this was also smart internal politics. It cemented on the record that the 2025 rout belonged as much to the abrasive rhetoric and policies Dutton espoused as to his poor standing. Ley needs her MPs to accept that future success begins with recognising how far the Coalition has drifted from the mainstream voter. Modernisation is not a choice but a necessity. The scale of this task will be rendered visually next month when Ley faces Anthony Albanese across the dispatch boxes in Parliament. With 94 seats, Labor MPs will extend well around the horseshoe while, behind Ley, will sit a rump comprising less than half of Labor's holding and just five Liberal women. Dutton made the basic error of moving further rightward because Albanese had colonised the centre-ground. It is not a mistake Ley plans on repeating. Long the overlooked understudy, Sussan Ley remains cautiously Delphic about her plans to rebuild the Liberal Party. But don't let that fool you. For years, she's been watching and learning from the "big beasts" of conservative certainty: Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton - men "destined to rule". These chaps are now all gone from politics - each, in the end, having made more opponents than supporters. Categorically, Ley is not "of" this phenotype. Which is why her plans to resuscitate the flatlining party begin with what not to say when communicating internally with MPs and externally with voters. Self-evidently, Ley can be a circuit-breaker ... if they allow her to be. Already, her vanquished rival, Angus Taylor is publicly opposing the suggestion of rule changes to select women for winnable seats. He calls affirmative action "undemocratic" knowing full well how that cruels her pitch. Some people might make the same observation about Liberal factions. Or the enforcement of shadow cabinet solidarity. Some might even say that opposing quotas is a strange mound to die on for "liberals" after ascending the mountainous debt of government-funded-and-operated nuclear power. In any event, it is hard to recall an instance when Dutton was so publicly countermanded. Despite a margin of just four votes over Taylor in last month's leadership ballot, what Ley envisions simply must be bold - closer to a rebuild than a renovation - albeit, while keeping the heritage-listed facade - let's call it "mid-century Menzies"? For all that, Ley knows she must hasten slowly. Reading between the lines, she wants to get back to basics, steer back to the mainstream. This would involve concentrating political contest around the traditional differences with Labor over managerial competence, budget and economic discipline, defence and national security, business deregulation and aspiration. Her "sealed section" might also include an end to the climate wars and the formal adoption of quotas to get women in Parliament - about which she is "agnostic". She describes all this as "meeting Australians where they are", which sounds as harmless as it does overdue. But for a punchy party addicted to the sugar-hit gratifications of culture wars, it is a correction likely to adduce plenty of Trumpian malcontents. On the plus side, Ley has a bona fide crisis to fix. The Coalition she has inherited needs a 75 per cent increase in seats to reach a majority in 2028. And virtually all of those gains must come in the cities, where the anti-woke, anti-renewables and anti-metro vibes from Dutton and the Nationals have basically killed the brand. "We didn't just lose, we got smashed, totally smashed," Ley told the National Press Club on Wednesday. "Over two elections, the Coalition has lost 33 seats in the House of Representatives. We've lost eight seats in the Senate. "Our primary vote has fallen by more than 9 per cent in the House. Our two-party-preferred vote is down more than 6 per cent, and we now hold just two of 43 inner-metro seats and seven of 45 outer-metro seats." Take that! Simply by acknowledging the scale of her party's descent, Ley showed more grit and empiricism than Dutton ever did. The "hardman" drafted unopposed after Morrison surrendered six Liberal jewels to female community candidates in 2022, had preferred to revile rather than resolve the "gender-quake" that had just levelled his party's blue-ribbon heartlands. Morrison had scoffed at the "cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of the inner-cities," but instead of disowning such bone-headed insults, Dutton doubled down, never hiding his contempt for the teals and for their voters. It was a declaration of war, with women generally and with the affluent Australians on whom the Liberal Party was built. Yet nobody in the party room (Ley included) spoke up at the time. MORE MARK KENNY: In her first month as leader, however, Ley has already done more soul-searching and more listening than her predecessors undertook in eight years. In the aftermath of a thrashing, she prefers John Howard's folksy wisdom that the Australian voters got it right. Thus, she says openly that a Liberal majority requires some or all of the teal seats. That Ley's was the first Press Club address by a Liberal leader in three years simply underscored what an odd, divisive unit Dutton had been. That it was the first address to the club by a female opposition leader (from either side) also made it historic. Of course, this was also smart internal politics. It cemented on the record that the 2025 rout belonged as much to the abrasive rhetoric and policies Dutton espoused as to his poor standing. Ley needs her MPs to accept that future success begins with recognising how far the Coalition has drifted from the mainstream voter. Modernisation is not a choice but a necessity. The scale of this task will be rendered visually next month when Ley faces Anthony Albanese across the dispatch boxes in Parliament. With 94 seats, Labor MPs will extend well around the horseshoe while, behind Ley, will sit a rump comprising less than half of Labor's holding and just five Liberal women. Dutton made the basic error of moving further rightward because Albanese had colonised the centre-ground. It is not a mistake Ley plans on repeating. Long the overlooked understudy, Sussan Ley remains cautiously Delphic about her plans to rebuild the Liberal Party. But don't let that fool you. For years, she's been watching and learning from the "big beasts" of conservative certainty: Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton - men "destined to rule". These chaps are now all gone from politics - each, in the end, having made more opponents than supporters. Categorically, Ley is not "of" this phenotype. Which is why her plans to resuscitate the flatlining party begin with what not to say when communicating internally with MPs and externally with voters. Self-evidently, Ley can be a circuit-breaker ... if they allow her to be. Already, her vanquished rival, Angus Taylor is publicly opposing the suggestion of rule changes to select women for winnable seats. He calls affirmative action "undemocratic" knowing full well how that cruels her pitch. Some people might make the same observation about Liberal factions. Or the enforcement of shadow cabinet solidarity. Some might even say that opposing quotas is a strange mound to die on for "liberals" after ascending the mountainous debt of government-funded-and-operated nuclear power. In any event, it is hard to recall an instance when Dutton was so publicly countermanded. Despite a margin of just four votes over Taylor in last month's leadership ballot, what Ley envisions simply must be bold - closer to a rebuild than a renovation - albeit, while keeping the heritage-listed facade - let's call it "mid-century Menzies"? For all that, Ley knows she must hasten slowly. Reading between the lines, she wants to get back to basics, steer back to the mainstream. This would involve concentrating political contest around the traditional differences with Labor over managerial competence, budget and economic discipline, defence and national security, business deregulation and aspiration. Her "sealed section" might also include an end to the climate wars and the formal adoption of quotas to get women in Parliament - about which she is "agnostic". She describes all this as "meeting Australians where they are", which sounds as harmless as it does overdue. But for a punchy party addicted to the sugar-hit gratifications of culture wars, it is a correction likely to adduce plenty of Trumpian malcontents. On the plus side, Ley has a bona fide crisis to fix. The Coalition she has inherited needs a 75 per cent increase in seats to reach a majority in 2028. And virtually all of those gains must come in the cities, where the anti-woke, anti-renewables and anti-metro vibes from Dutton and the Nationals have basically killed the brand. "We didn't just lose, we got smashed, totally smashed," Ley told the National Press Club on Wednesday. "Over two elections, the Coalition has lost 33 seats in the House of Representatives. We've lost eight seats in the Senate. "Our primary vote has fallen by more than 9 per cent in the House. Our two-party-preferred vote is down more than 6 per cent, and we now hold just two of 43 inner-metro seats and seven of 45 outer-metro seats." Take that! Simply by acknowledging the scale of her party's descent, Ley showed more grit and empiricism than Dutton ever did. The "hardman" drafted unopposed after Morrison surrendered six Liberal jewels to female community candidates in 2022, had preferred to revile rather than resolve the "gender-quake" that had just levelled his party's blue-ribbon heartlands. Morrison had scoffed at the "cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of the inner-cities," but instead of disowning such bone-headed insults, Dutton doubled down, never hiding his contempt for the teals and for their voters. It was a declaration of war, with women generally and with the affluent Australians on whom the Liberal Party was built. Yet nobody in the party room (Ley included) spoke up at the time. MORE MARK KENNY: In her first month as leader, however, Ley has already done more soul-searching and more listening than her predecessors undertook in eight years. In the aftermath of a thrashing, she prefers John Howard's folksy wisdom that the Australian voters got it right. Thus, she says openly that a Liberal majority requires some or all of the teal seats. That Ley's was the first Press Club address by a Liberal leader in three years simply underscored what an odd, divisive unit Dutton had been. That it was the first address to the club by a female opposition leader (from either side) also made it historic. Of course, this was also smart internal politics. It cemented on the record that the 2025 rout belonged as much to the abrasive rhetoric and policies Dutton espoused as to his poor standing. Ley needs her MPs to accept that future success begins with recognising how far the Coalition has drifted from the mainstream voter. Modernisation is not a choice but a necessity. The scale of this task will be rendered visually next month when Ley faces Anthony Albanese across the dispatch boxes in Parliament. With 94 seats, Labor MPs will extend well around the horseshoe while, behind Ley, will sit a rump comprising less than half of Labor's holding and just five Liberal women. Dutton made the basic error of moving further rightward because Albanese had colonised the centre-ground. It is not a mistake Ley plans on repeating. Long the overlooked understudy, Sussan Ley remains cautiously Delphic about her plans to rebuild the Liberal Party. But don't let that fool you. For years, she's been watching and learning from the "big beasts" of conservative certainty: Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton - men "destined to rule". These chaps are now all gone from politics - each, in the end, having made more opponents than supporters. Categorically, Ley is not "of" this phenotype. Which is why her plans to resuscitate the flatlining party begin with what not to say when communicating internally with MPs and externally with voters. Self-evidently, Ley can be a circuit-breaker ... if they allow her to be. Already, her vanquished rival, Angus Taylor is publicly opposing the suggestion of rule changes to select women for winnable seats. He calls affirmative action "undemocratic" knowing full well how that cruels her pitch. Some people might make the same observation about Liberal factions. Or the enforcement of shadow cabinet solidarity. Some might even say that opposing quotas is a strange mound to die on for "liberals" after ascending the mountainous debt of government-funded-and-operated nuclear power. In any event, it is hard to recall an instance when Dutton was so publicly countermanded. Despite a margin of just four votes over Taylor in last month's leadership ballot, what Ley envisions simply must be bold - closer to a rebuild than a renovation - albeit, while keeping the heritage-listed facade - let's call it "mid-century Menzies"? For all that, Ley knows she must hasten slowly. Reading between the lines, she wants to get back to basics, steer back to the mainstream. This would involve concentrating political contest around the traditional differences with Labor over managerial competence, budget and economic discipline, defence and national security, business deregulation and aspiration. Her "sealed section" might also include an end to the climate wars and the formal adoption of quotas to get women in Parliament - about which she is "agnostic". She describes all this as "meeting Australians where they are", which sounds as harmless as it does overdue. But for a punchy party addicted to the sugar-hit gratifications of culture wars, it is a correction likely to adduce plenty of Trumpian malcontents. On the plus side, Ley has a bona fide crisis to fix. The Coalition she has inherited needs a 75 per cent increase in seats to reach a majority in 2028. And virtually all of those gains must come in the cities, where the anti-woke, anti-renewables and anti-metro vibes from Dutton and the Nationals have basically killed the brand. "We didn't just lose, we got smashed, totally smashed," Ley told the National Press Club on Wednesday. "Over two elections, the Coalition has lost 33 seats in the House of Representatives. We've lost eight seats in the Senate. "Our primary vote has fallen by more than 9 per cent in the House. Our two-party-preferred vote is down more than 6 per cent, and we now hold just two of 43 inner-metro seats and seven of 45 outer-metro seats." Take that! Simply by acknowledging the scale of her party's descent, Ley showed more grit and empiricism than Dutton ever did. The "hardman" drafted unopposed after Morrison surrendered six Liberal jewels to female community candidates in 2022, had preferred to revile rather than resolve the "gender-quake" that had just levelled his party's blue-ribbon heartlands. Morrison had scoffed at the "cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of the inner-cities," but instead of disowning such bone-headed insults, Dutton doubled down, never hiding his contempt for the teals and for their voters. It was a declaration of war, with women generally and with the affluent Australians on whom the Liberal Party was built. Yet nobody in the party room (Ley included) spoke up at the time. MORE MARK KENNY: In her first month as leader, however, Ley has already done more soul-searching and more listening than her predecessors undertook in eight years. In the aftermath of a thrashing, she prefers John Howard's folksy wisdom that the Australian voters got it right. Thus, she says openly that a Liberal majority requires some or all of the teal seats. That Ley's was the first Press Club address by a Liberal leader in three years simply underscored what an odd, divisive unit Dutton had been. That it was the first address to the club by a female opposition leader (from either side) also made it historic. Of course, this was also smart internal politics. It cemented on the record that the 2025 rout belonged as much to the abrasive rhetoric and policies Dutton espoused as to his poor standing. Ley needs her MPs to accept that future success begins with recognising how far the Coalition has drifted from the mainstream voter. Modernisation is not a choice but a necessity. The scale of this task will be rendered visually next month when Ley faces Anthony Albanese across the dispatch boxes in Parliament. With 94 seats, Labor MPs will extend well around the horseshoe while, behind Ley, will sit a rump comprising less than half of Labor's holding and just five Liberal women. Dutton made the basic error of moving further rightward because Albanese had colonised the centre-ground. It is not a mistake Ley plans on repeating.
