Latest news with #Ley
The Advertiser
2 hours ago
- Politics
- The Advertiser
We spoke to Barnaby Joyce, and this is what he had to say about net zero
When Barnaby Joyce caught up with this masthead in Parliament House last week, the former deputy prime minister was in fine form. After being relegated to the backbench by Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, Mr Joyce was clearly enjoying the attention while talking up his private member's bill to abolish Australia's climate target. The member for New England, who says Ms Ley's predecessor Peter Dutton wanted to sack him for refusing to say nuclear energy would bring down electricity prices and opposing net zero, has gone rogue with his bill - which will be top of the agenda when politicians return to Canberra in three weeks' time. It's putting a spotlight on the Coalition's longstanding divisions over climate and energy, just as Ms Ley seeks to unite the opposition after its electoral wipe-out. Mr Joyce calls the pursuit of net zero a "lunatic crusade" and wants Australia to go with the cheapest possible energy - even if that is coal - and rails against renewables like solar and "swindle factories" (wind farms). And he's not the only one, with Coalition frontbencher Andrew Hastie taking aim at new Western Australian Liberal leader Basil Zempilas for supporting net zero this week, ahead of Ms Ley's upcoming visit. The Albanese government is seeking to extract as much political capital as possible from the issue, even as it comes under pressure over its own climate policy ahead of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September. Labor passed a procedural motion on Thursday scheduling Mr Joyce's private member's bill for debate in the House of Representatives on the first sitting day back, August 25. It was a tactical play, aimed at dialling up the pressure on Ms Ley as she grapples with the longstanding conflict among her MPs over climate. The motion was opposed by all Coalition members except for Mr Joyce. His bill seeks to dismantle the 2050 net zero target - which the Coalition supported before the election but is now reviewing - by overturning or amending climate legislation. Ms Ley sought to downplay the divisions this week while vowing to allow all views to be considered as the Coalition reviews net zero through a working group led by energy and emissions spokesperson Dan Tehan. "It's going to flesh out the different perspectives," she said. "Everything is on the table." While conservatives want to ditch the target, some moderate Liberals say that without it, the Coalition, which has been reduced to just 43 lower house seats and 27 in the Senate, cannot form a credible alternative government or win back inner-city seats lost to teal independents. Climate Council chief executive Amanda McKenzie says the "centre of gravity in Australia now is for strong targets", with the majority of civil society and business groups supporting the clean energy transition, describing Mr Joyce as a "lone voice in the community". "[His] policy position is let it rip, like let the climate crisis get as bad as it can, because we're not going to do anything about it," Ms McKenzie told this masthead. "The science shows that we can if we let climate change go unchecked, that's a $4 trillion hit to the economy. That's the death of the Great Barrier Reef and the Queensland tourism industry ... Nearly 10 per cent of properties ... would be uninsurable." On Monday, One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson took up Mr Joyce's cause with an urgency motion in the Senate calling for Australia to abandon its net zero target. While it failed, Liberal senator Alex Antic and Nationals senator Matt Canavan joined One Nation's four senators and United Australia Party senator Ralph Babet in voting for it. When asked if she or her office directed Liberal senators to abstain from the vote, Ms Ley said only: "We're regularly in touch with senators, and we're regularly in touch with members via the whip, via the managers of both opposition business in the House and the Senate." Senator Canavan, one of the Coalition's most vocal critics of net zero, said there was no hurry to reach an agreed position this far out from the next election, telling reporters: "We're irrelevant right now, who cares what it looks [like] right now ... It doesn't have to be neat or tidy or pretty". When asked about the comment, Mr Tehan said it was "incredibly important that we have an alternative to put to the Australian people" and that work would continue "over the next nine to 12 months". As the Coalition pursued Labor in parliamentary question time over power bill costs on Thursday, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen hit back with: "They are triggered every time we mention renewable energy." While Ms Ley seeks to mend the Coalition's climate rift, the government is pushing ahead with efforts to reduce Australia's carbon emissions through a transition to renewable energy. UN climate chief Simon Steele - who met with Mr Bowen in Canberra this week - has urged the government to "go big", saying the new target will be a "defining moment" for Australia, while Independent ACT senator David Pocock called it "the biggest test of the moral courage of the Albanese government". The Climate Council wants a commitment to slash emissions by 75 per cent by 2030 and reach net zero by 2035, saying this is the level required to "do our fair share to hold global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius" - the level scientists warn will tip global warming into catastrophic and irreversible territory - while the Greens say anything less would breach the Paris Agreement. Ms McKenzie said Australia had for years been a pariah on the international stage when it came to climate, but that things were turning around. "It was embarrassing to go to these international negotiations and say you're Australian ... But that has changed substantially," she said. READ MORE: "If there's a trade negotiation, we should be in the room. And the only way to get in the room is to have skin in the game ... You only have skin in the game in climate if you are acting, then you have credibility." Mr Bowen told the ABC: "We'll be setting our target in terms of our national interest, what's good for Australia, what comes out of the modelling as the right balance [and] as the Climate Change Act demands, [with] consideration of the science and all the evidence before us." The CSIRO, which this week released its annual GenCost report for 2024-25, says firm renewables backed by transmission are the lowest-cost new form of electricity generation technology, while small modular nuclear reactors are the most expensive. The Coalition is yet to decide if it wants to retain the policy Mr Dutton took to the election to build nuclear power plants to meet Australia's energy needs, but wants to lift the moratorium on nuclear as a starting point. When asked by Mr Tehan if the government would meet its target of achieving 82 per cent renewables by 2030 target, Mr Bowen said it took "some temerity from those opposite to ask this side of the house about meeting our targets, when they can't agree on whether they have a target". When Barnaby Joyce caught up with this masthead in Parliament House last week, the former deputy prime minister was in fine form. After being relegated to the backbench by Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, Mr Joyce was clearly enjoying the attention while talking up his private member's bill to abolish Australia's climate target. The member for New England, who says Ms Ley's predecessor Peter Dutton wanted to sack him for refusing to say nuclear energy would bring down electricity prices and opposing net zero, has gone rogue with his bill - which will be top of the agenda when politicians return to Canberra in three weeks' time. It's putting a spotlight on the Coalition's longstanding divisions over climate and energy, just as Ms Ley seeks to unite the opposition after its electoral wipe-out. Mr Joyce calls the pursuit of net zero a "lunatic crusade" and wants Australia to go with the cheapest possible energy - even if that is coal - and rails against renewables like solar and "swindle factories" (wind farms). And he's not the only one, with Coalition frontbencher Andrew Hastie taking aim at new Western Australian Liberal leader Basil Zempilas for supporting net zero this week, ahead of Ms Ley's upcoming visit. The Albanese government is seeking to extract as much political capital as possible from the issue, even as it comes under pressure over its own climate policy ahead of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September. Labor passed a procedural motion on Thursday scheduling Mr Joyce's private member's bill for debate in the House of Representatives on the first sitting day back, August 25. It was a tactical play, aimed at dialling up the pressure on Ms Ley as she grapples with the longstanding conflict among her MPs over climate. The motion was opposed by all Coalition members except for Mr Joyce. His bill seeks to dismantle the 2050 net zero target - which the Coalition supported before the election but is now reviewing - by overturning or amending climate legislation. Ms Ley sought to downplay the divisions this week while vowing to allow all views to be considered as the Coalition reviews net zero through a working group led by energy and emissions spokesperson Dan Tehan. "It's going to flesh out the different perspectives," she said. "Everything is on the table." While conservatives want to ditch the target, some moderate Liberals say that without it, the Coalition, which has been reduced to just 43 lower house seats and 27 in the Senate, cannot form a credible alternative government or win back inner-city seats lost to teal independents. Climate Council chief executive Amanda McKenzie says the "centre of gravity in Australia now is for strong targets", with the majority of civil society and business groups supporting the clean energy transition, describing Mr Joyce as a "lone voice in the community". "[His] policy position is let it rip, like let the climate crisis get as bad as it can, because we're not going to do anything about it," Ms McKenzie told this masthead. "The science shows that we can if we let climate change go unchecked, that's a $4 trillion hit to the economy. That's the death of the Great Barrier Reef and the Queensland tourism industry ... Nearly 10 per cent of properties ... would be uninsurable." On Monday, One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson took up Mr Joyce's cause with an urgency motion in the Senate calling for Australia to abandon its net zero target. While it failed, Liberal senator Alex Antic and Nationals senator Matt Canavan joined One Nation's four senators and United Australia Party senator Ralph Babet in voting for it. When asked if she or her office directed Liberal senators to abstain from the vote, Ms Ley said only: "We're regularly in touch with senators, and we're regularly in touch with members via the whip, via the managers of both opposition business in the House and the Senate." Senator Canavan, one of the Coalition's most vocal critics of net zero, said there was no hurry to reach an agreed position this far out from the next election, telling reporters: "We're irrelevant right now, who cares what it looks [like] right now ... It doesn't have to be neat or tidy or pretty". When asked about the comment, Mr Tehan said it was "incredibly important that we have an alternative to put to the Australian people" and that work would continue "over the next nine to 12 months". As the Coalition pursued Labor in parliamentary question time over power bill costs on Thursday, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen hit back with: "They are triggered every time we mention renewable energy." While Ms Ley seeks to mend the Coalition's climate rift, the government is pushing ahead with efforts to reduce Australia's carbon emissions through a transition to renewable energy. UN climate chief Simon Steele - who met with Mr Bowen in Canberra this week - has urged the government to "go big", saying the new target will be a "defining moment" for Australia, while Independent ACT senator David Pocock called it "the biggest test of the moral courage of the Albanese government". The Climate Council wants a commitment to slash emissions by 75 per cent by 2030 and reach net zero by 2035, saying this is the level required to "do our fair share to hold global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius" - the level scientists warn will tip global warming into catastrophic and irreversible territory - while the Greens say anything less would breach the Paris Agreement. Ms McKenzie said Australia had for years been a pariah on the international stage when it came to climate, but that things were turning around. "It was embarrassing to go to these international negotiations and say you're Australian ... But that has changed substantially," she said. READ MORE: "If there's a trade negotiation, we should be in the room. And the only way to get in the room is to have skin in the game ... You only have skin in the game in climate if you are acting, then you have credibility." Mr Bowen told the ABC: "We'll be setting our target in terms of our national interest, what's good for Australia, what comes out of the modelling as the right balance [and] as the Climate Change Act demands, [with] consideration of the science and all the evidence before us." The CSIRO, which this week released its annual GenCost report for 2024-25, says firm renewables backed by transmission are the lowest-cost new form of electricity generation technology, while small modular nuclear reactors are the most expensive. The Coalition is yet to decide if it wants to retain the policy Mr Dutton took to the election to build nuclear power plants to meet Australia's energy needs, but wants to lift the moratorium on nuclear as a starting point. When asked by Mr Tehan if the government would meet its target of achieving 82 per cent renewables by 2030 target, Mr Bowen said it took "some temerity from those opposite to ask this side of the house about meeting our targets, when they can't agree on whether they have a target". When Barnaby Joyce caught up with this masthead in Parliament House last week, the former deputy prime minister was in fine form. After being relegated to the backbench by Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, Mr Joyce was clearly enjoying the attention while talking up his private member's bill to abolish Australia's climate target. The member for New England, who says Ms Ley's predecessor Peter Dutton wanted to sack him for refusing to say nuclear energy would bring down electricity prices and opposing net zero, has gone rogue with his bill - which will be top of the agenda when politicians return to Canberra in three weeks' time. It's putting a spotlight on the Coalition's longstanding divisions over climate and energy, just as Ms Ley seeks to unite the opposition after its electoral wipe-out. Mr Joyce calls the pursuit of net zero a "lunatic crusade" and wants Australia to go with the cheapest possible energy - even if that is coal - and rails against renewables like solar and "swindle factories" (wind farms). And he's not the only one, with Coalition frontbencher Andrew Hastie taking aim at new Western Australian Liberal leader Basil Zempilas for supporting net zero this week, ahead of Ms Ley's upcoming visit. The Albanese government is seeking to extract as much political capital as possible from the issue, even as it comes under pressure over its own climate policy ahead of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September. Labor passed a procedural motion on Thursday scheduling Mr Joyce's private member's bill for debate in the House of Representatives on the first sitting day back, August 25. It was a tactical play, aimed at dialling up the pressure on Ms Ley as she grapples with the longstanding conflict among her MPs over climate. The motion was opposed by all Coalition members except for Mr Joyce. His bill seeks to dismantle the 2050 net zero target - which the Coalition supported before the election but is now reviewing - by overturning or amending climate legislation. Ms Ley sought to downplay the divisions this week while vowing to allow all views to be considered as the Coalition reviews net zero through a working group led by energy and emissions spokesperson Dan Tehan. "It's going to flesh out the different perspectives," she said. "Everything is on the table." While conservatives want to ditch the target, some moderate Liberals say that without it, the Coalition, which has been reduced to just 43 lower house seats and 27 in the Senate, cannot form a credible alternative government or win back inner-city seats lost to teal independents. Climate Council chief executive Amanda McKenzie says the "centre of gravity in Australia now is for strong targets", with the majority of civil society and business groups supporting the clean energy transition, describing Mr Joyce as a "lone voice in the community". "[His] policy position is let it rip, like let the climate crisis get as bad as it can, because we're not going to do anything about it," Ms McKenzie told this masthead. "The science shows that we can if we let climate change go unchecked, that's a $4 trillion hit to the economy. That's the death of the Great Barrier Reef and the Queensland tourism industry ... Nearly 10 per cent of properties ... would be uninsurable." On Monday, One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson took up Mr Joyce's cause with an urgency motion in the Senate calling for Australia to abandon its net zero target. While it failed, Liberal senator Alex Antic and Nationals senator Matt Canavan joined One Nation's four senators and United Australia Party senator Ralph Babet in voting for it. When asked if she or her office directed Liberal senators to abstain from the vote, Ms Ley said only: "We're regularly in touch with senators, and we're regularly in touch with members via the whip, via the managers of both opposition business in the House and the Senate." Senator Canavan, one of the Coalition's most vocal critics of net zero, said there was no hurry to reach an agreed position this far out from the next election, telling reporters: "We're irrelevant right now, who cares what it looks [like] right now ... It doesn't have to be neat or tidy or pretty". When asked about the comment, Mr Tehan said it was "incredibly important that we have an alternative to put to the Australian people" and that work would continue "over the next nine to 12 months". As the Coalition pursued Labor in parliamentary question time over power bill costs on Thursday, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen hit back with: "They are triggered every time we mention renewable energy." While Ms Ley seeks to mend the Coalition's climate rift, the government is pushing ahead with efforts to reduce Australia's carbon emissions through a transition to renewable energy. UN climate chief Simon Steele - who met with Mr Bowen in Canberra this week - has urged the government to "go big", saying the new target will be a "defining moment" for Australia, while Independent ACT senator David Pocock called it "the biggest test of the moral courage of the Albanese government". The Climate Council wants a commitment to slash emissions by 75 per cent by 2030 and reach net zero by 2035, saying this is the level required to "do our fair share to hold global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius" - the level scientists warn will tip global warming into catastrophic and irreversible territory - while the Greens say anything less would breach the Paris Agreement. Ms McKenzie said Australia had for years been a pariah on the international stage when it came to climate, but that things were turning around. "It was embarrassing to go to these international negotiations and say you're Australian ... But that has changed substantially," she said. READ MORE: "If there's a trade negotiation, we should be in the room. And the only way to get in the room is to have skin in the game ... You only have skin in the game in climate if you are acting, then you have credibility." Mr Bowen told the ABC: "We'll be setting our target in terms of our national interest, what's good for Australia, what comes out of the modelling as the right balance [and] as the Climate Change Act demands, [with] consideration of the science and all the evidence before us." The CSIRO, which this week released its annual GenCost report for 2024-25, says firm renewables backed by transmission are the lowest-cost new form of electricity generation technology, while small modular nuclear reactors are the most expensive. The Coalition is yet to decide if it wants to retain the policy Mr Dutton took to the election to build nuclear power plants to meet Australia's energy needs, but wants to lift the moratorium on nuclear as a starting point. When asked by Mr Tehan if the government would meet its target of achieving 82 per cent renewables by 2030 target, Mr Bowen said it took "some temerity from those opposite to ask this side of the house about meeting our targets, when they can't agree on whether they have a target". When Barnaby Joyce caught up with this masthead in Parliament House last week, the former deputy prime minister was in fine form. After being relegated to the backbench by Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, Mr Joyce was clearly enjoying the attention while talking up his private member's bill to abolish Australia's climate target. The member for New England, who says Ms Ley's predecessor Peter Dutton wanted to sack him for refusing to say nuclear energy would bring down electricity prices and opposing net zero, has gone rogue with his bill - which will be top of the agenda when politicians return to Canberra in three weeks' time. It's putting a spotlight on the Coalition's longstanding divisions over climate and energy, just as Ms Ley seeks to unite the opposition after its electoral wipe-out. Mr Joyce calls the pursuit of net zero a "lunatic crusade" and wants Australia to go with the cheapest possible energy - even if that is coal - and rails against renewables like solar and "swindle factories" (wind farms). And he's not the only one, with Coalition frontbencher Andrew Hastie taking aim at new Western Australian Liberal leader Basil Zempilas for supporting net zero this week, ahead of Ms Ley's upcoming visit. The Albanese government is seeking to extract as much political capital as possible from the issue, even as it comes under pressure over its own climate policy ahead of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September. Labor passed a procedural motion on Thursday scheduling Mr Joyce's private member's bill for debate in the House of Representatives on the first sitting day back, August 25. It was a tactical play, aimed at dialling up the pressure on Ms Ley as she grapples with the longstanding conflict among her MPs over climate. The motion was opposed by all Coalition members except for Mr Joyce. His bill seeks to dismantle the 2050 net zero target - which the Coalition supported before the election but is now reviewing - by overturning or amending climate legislation. Ms Ley sought to downplay the divisions this week while vowing to allow all views to be considered as the Coalition reviews net zero through a working group led by energy and emissions spokesperson Dan Tehan. "It's going to flesh out the different perspectives," she said. "Everything is on the table." While conservatives want to ditch the target, some moderate Liberals say that without it, the Coalition, which has been reduced to just 43 lower house seats and 27 in the Senate, cannot form a credible alternative government or win back inner-city seats lost to teal independents. Climate Council chief executive Amanda McKenzie says the "centre of gravity in Australia now is for strong targets", with the majority of civil society and business groups supporting the clean energy transition, describing Mr Joyce as a "lone voice in the community". "[His] policy position is let it rip, like let the climate crisis get as bad as it can, because we're not going to do anything about it," Ms McKenzie told this masthead. "The science shows that we can if we let climate change go unchecked, that's a $4 trillion hit to the economy. That's the death of the Great Barrier Reef and the Queensland tourism industry ... Nearly 10 per cent of properties ... would be uninsurable." On Monday, One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson took up Mr Joyce's cause with an urgency motion in the Senate calling for Australia to abandon its net zero target. While it failed, Liberal senator Alex Antic and Nationals senator Matt Canavan joined One Nation's four senators and United Australia Party senator Ralph Babet in voting for it. When asked if she or her office directed Liberal senators to abstain from the vote, Ms Ley said only: "We're regularly in touch with senators, and we're regularly in touch with members via the whip, via the managers of both opposition business in the House and the Senate." Senator Canavan, one of the Coalition's most vocal critics of net zero, said there was no hurry to reach an agreed position this far out from the next election, telling reporters: "We're irrelevant right now, who cares what it looks [like] right now ... It doesn't have to be neat or tidy or pretty". When asked about the comment, Mr Tehan said it was "incredibly important that we have an alternative to put to the Australian people" and that work would continue "over the next nine to 12 months". As the Coalition pursued Labor in parliamentary question time over power bill costs on Thursday, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen hit back with: "They are triggered every time we mention renewable energy." While Ms Ley seeks to mend the Coalition's climate rift, the government is pushing ahead with efforts to reduce Australia's carbon emissions through a transition to renewable energy. UN climate chief Simon Steele - who met with Mr Bowen in Canberra this week - has urged the government to "go big", saying the new target will be a "defining moment" for Australia, while Independent ACT senator David Pocock called it "the biggest test of the moral courage of the Albanese government". The Climate Council wants a commitment to slash emissions by 75 per cent by 2030 and reach net zero by 2035, saying this is the level required to "do our fair share to hold global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius" - the level scientists warn will tip global warming into catastrophic and irreversible territory - while the Greens say anything less would breach the Paris Agreement. Ms McKenzie said Australia had for years been a pariah on the international stage when it came to climate, but that things were turning around. "It was embarrassing to go to these international negotiations and say you're Australian ... But that has changed substantially," she said. READ MORE: "If there's a trade negotiation, we should be in the room. And the only way to get in the room is to have skin in the game ... You only have skin in the game in climate if you are acting, then you have credibility." Mr Bowen told the ABC: "We'll be setting our target in terms of our national interest, what's good for Australia, what comes out of the modelling as the right balance [and] as the Climate Change Act demands, [with] consideration of the science and all the evidence before us." The CSIRO, which this week released its annual GenCost report for 2024-25, says firm renewables backed by transmission are the lowest-cost new form of electricity generation technology, while small modular nuclear reactors are the most expensive. The Coalition is yet to decide if it wants to retain the policy Mr Dutton took to the election to build nuclear power plants to meet Australia's energy needs, but wants to lift the moratorium on nuclear as a starting point. When asked by Mr Tehan if the government would meet its target of achieving 82 per cent renewables by 2030 target, Mr Bowen said it took "some temerity from those opposite to ask this side of the house about meeting our targets, when they can't agree on whether they have a target".
The Australian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Australian
Core support for the Coalition collapses to 40-year low: Newspoll
Core support for the Coalition has fallen to the lowest point in 40 years following Labor's blistering victory at the 2025 federal election. In the first Newspoll by The Australian since May's ballot, primary vote for the Coalition fell from 31.8 per cent at the election to just 29 per cent. Labor had meanwhile extended its two-party preferred lead, from 55.2 per cent at the election to 57 per cent, while the primary vote sat at 37 per cent. The result for the Liberal/Nationals coalition is worst primary vote since Newspoll first compared primary vote levels across the federal parties in November 1985. It also marks an 11-point decrease for the Coalition since its most recent peak of 40 per cent just eight months earlier. As for the Prime Minister, some 47 per cent of respondents said they were satisfied with his performance – an equal number, 47 per cent, said they were not. For the new Opposition leader, Sussan Ley received approval ratings consistent with newly-elected opposition leaders, with 35 per cent. Ms Ley trailed behind Mr Albanese on preferred prime minister, with the Labor leader sitting at 52 per cent and Ms Ley at 32 per cent. She did, though, outpace her predecessor, Peter Dutton, who returned just 25 per cent of the preferred prime minister vote after his first outing as Liberal leader. Read related topics: Newspoll Breaking News New York mass shooter blamed NFL for his brain injuries Breaking News Gaza famine warning as Israel resists ceasefire calls
The Australian
2 days ago
- Business
- The Australian
Opposition to back Labor's student debt bill
The Albanese government's signature student debt-slashing Bill has passed through the House of Representatives, bringing touted relief for millions of graduates one step closer. While Labor could have passed the Bill with its massive 94-seat majority, the Coalition also backed it after Sussan Ley confirmed the opposition would not stand in the way. But the Coalition's guarantee is crucial to getting it through the Senate, where Labor does not hold a majority and the Greens have threatened to stall it in a bid to attach amendments. Fronting media before the vote, the Opposition Leader said she still had concerns over the Albanese government's broader response to the cost-of-living crisis, but that 'we will not oppose the government's proposal'. 'And I want to say this to students today – remember this moment,' Ms Ley told reporters. 'Because Anthony Albanese says life will be easier under him, costs will come down, everything will get cheaper. 'Remember this moment because, when I have spoken to young people across the country, they have talked about escalating costs, in rent, electricity, any groceries, in everything a student needs to spend money on. 'It has been really tough.' Opposition Leader Sussan Ley says the Coalition will back Labor's signature student debt-slashing Bill. Picture: Martin Ollman / NewsWire She said added that 'underpinning this student debt relief Bill has been a massive cost-of-living crisis for Australia's students' and vowed to hold the government to account. 'But today, we agreed to not oppose the Bill as it makes its way through the parliament,' Ms Ley said. 'We do care about students who are struggling with the cost of living and said we would be positive where we can be and critical where we need to be.' Labor's Bill was central to its youth-focused re-election pitch. It would cut student debts by 20 per cent for some three million graduates or wipe off about $5500 from the average debt. The changes would also raise the repayment threshold for student loans from $54,000 to $67,000. Earlier, Education Minister Jason Clare told his Labor colleagues that he hoped the Bill would pass before question time.
ABC News
2 days ago
- Politics
- ABC News
Anthony Albanese and Sussan Ley were once on a Palestine unity ticket
Here's a weird state of affairs. On an issue that is swinging a wrecking ball through institutions and communities across this country and indeed the democratic world, the leaders of Australia's two major parties are quiet co-occupants of a historic unity ticket. Both Anthony Albanese and Sussan Ley are past convenors of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine group, having joined it — or in Albanese's case, actively co-founded it — when they were backbenchers, more than two decades ago. Both have expressly supported the recognition of Palestinian statehood. Albanese created the group in 1999 with Joe Hockey, who was at the time a new Liberal MP and a junior minister in John Howard's Coalition government. Ley joined the Parliamentary Friends Of Palestine shortly after her election to the House of Representatives in 2001, having wrested the vast regional seat of Farrer from the National Party. In 2003, she took on a leadership role, telling the Australian Jewish News: "For those of us who look forward to an independent Palestinian state and wish to advance the cause of viable sovereign statehood, this group gives us an opportunity to hold out the hand of friendship, understanding and trust." In 2011, by which time she was a shadow minister in Tony Abbott's opposition, Ley told the Parliament that she supported the Palestinian people's bid for recognition and membership of the United Nations. On the question of Palestine, the position of the federal Labor Party is clear. In 2021, for the first time, the party's national conference voted not only to confirm its support for a two-state solution, but to "call on the next Labor government to recognise Palestine as a state", in a motion authored by then shadow foreign minister Penny Wong. That next Labor government arrived at the 2022 election. Wong is now foreign minister. And now the opposition is led by someone who also is on parliamentary record as supporting Palestinian statehood. If you were an intelligent alien freshly landed from the Planet Zorb, you could be forgiven for thinking matters should be pretty straightforward from here, yes? No. The rules of Australian political debate about Palestine — more than 12,000km away from Canberra and approximately seven ten-thousandths of our land mass — are much, much more complicated than that. Labor Senator Fatima Payman last year found this out the hard way, when she announced her intention to vote for a Greens Senate motion to recognise Palestine, citing the Labor platform's explicit position. Payman is no longer a Labor senator. She is permanently estranged from her old party, an outcome that would cause our alien visitor to scratch its head, if that's indeed how intelligent life-forms from Zorb express puzzlement. The best demonstration of how tangled and Byzantine this matter can become is obtained by zooming back in time to the minority government of Julia Gillard, the time-frame in which Ley devoted a parliamentary speech to her support for Palestinian statehood. Albanese, by this time the Leader of the House, wrangling legislation day by day for a prime minister holding power by one vote, was publicly more circumspect, for good reason. The status of a Palestinian state was by this time the nexus of a significant proxy war within Labor. And a complex, multi-layered war it was, fought mostly below the public water line, but much muddied by related disputes, some of them ancient: factional divides between Left and Right, or within the Right between NSW and Victoria. The ongoing bad blood between Gillard and the leader she deposed, Kevin Rudd, was an additional underwater hazard. By that time, Rudd was foreign minister, running a campaign for Australia to win a seat on the UN Security Council, and pressing Gillard to distance the government from Israel. Gillard was a supporter of Australia's alliance with Israel, who despite nominally belonging to Labor's Left faction, was much more closely associated with elements of the Right (Keep up, little alien. Don't lose focus!) As Australian Union of Students leader in the early 1980s, Gillard was instrumental in quashing that organisation's activism for Palestine in the early 1980s, arguing that it "alienated the vast mass of students". Australia won its bid for a seat at the Security Council in late 2012, by which time Kevin Rudd had quit as foreign minister and his replacement, former NSW premier Bob Carr, had taken over trying to talk Gillard out of voting against Palestine being given observer status at the UN. "To feed my gloomy irritation I sustain another defeat at the hands of the Likudniks," reports Carr in a diary entry on November 12, 2012, using one of his terms for pro-Israel Labor colleagues (another is "felafel faction"). In the same entry, Carr moodily records that an attempt to "escape episodes of atrial fibrillation" by eliminating coffee from his diet had also failed, producing only lethargy and headaches. "To live is to lose ground." But in a cabinet meeting on November 27 of that year, Carr and the majority of his cabinet colleagues erupted in rebellion against their prime minister. Some were motivated by principle. Some by factional allegiance. Some by the demographics of their electorates. Some by their loyalty to Rudd. Either way, Gillard had only two cabinet voices defending her that day: Victorian right-wingers Stephen Conroy and Bill Shorten. The upshot was that Gillard was forced to retreat from her position. Australia did not — as she'd earlier directed — vote against the motion affording Palestine observer status at the UN. Instead, we abstained. The motion passed easily, with only a handful of nations opposed. Australia's stance made no difference to the final result, but it nearly tipped Gillard out of the leadership. As it was, she lasted just another six months. Incidentally, Carr — who remains Labor's most trenchant critic of Israel, and on Monday called upon the government to recognise Palestinian statehood as soon as possible — way back in 1977 co-founded, along with Bob Hawke, the group Labor Friends of Israel. Ley, meanwhile, has had her past statements on Palestine used against her in internal backgrounding campaigns twice this year. First in January to frustrate her request for the foreign affairs portfolio, which as deputy Liberal leader she was well within her rights to demand in accordance with the tradition. And again, less successfully, when she sought the leadership. On Monday, Ley declared that she remained "a friend of the Palestinian people", but joined her colleagues in blaming Hamas for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the horror of which continues to deepen. The prime minister, meanwhile, strengthened his criticism of Israel in a further incremental step towards adopting a position to which he has been bound in the simplest of terms since 2021. Our visiting alien might well ask: "Okay, so if binding policy positions and statements of principle aren't a reliable guide to outcomes, then what is it that shifts the needle?" And the answer is: Usually, what shifts the needle is the degree of unspeakable suffering sustained by the innocent. Especially when they are children. The dreadful images of October 7, terrified young people and children murdered and abducted. And then, the sickening images of starving children in Gaza. It's the most depressing answer imaginable.
Sky News AU
3 days ago
- Business
- Sky News AU
Opposition to back Labor's student debt bill
Millions of Australians are closer to getting thousands wiped off their student debt after MPs passed a major Labor Bill. The Albanese government's signature student debt-slashing Bill has passed through the House of Representatives, bringing touted relief for millions of graduates one step closer. While Labor could have passed the Bill with its massive 94-seat majority, the Coalition also backed it after Sussan Ley confirmed the opposition would not stand in the way. But the Coalition's guarantee is crucial to getting it through the Senate, where Labor does not hold a majority and the Greens have threatened to stall it in a bid to attach amendments. — Australian House of Representatives (@AboutTheHouse) July 29, 2025 Fronting media before the vote, the Opposition Leader said she still had concerns over the Albanese government's broader response to the cost-of-living crisis, but that 'we will not oppose the government's proposal'. 'And I want to say this to students today – remember this moment,' Ms Ley told reporters. 'Because Anthony Albanese says life will be easier under him, costs will come down, everything will get cheaper. 'Remember this moment because, when I have spoken to young people across the country, they have talked about escalating costs, in rent, electricity, any groceries, in everything a student needs to spend money on. 'It has been really tough.' She said added that 'underpinning this student debt relief Bill has been a massive cost-of-living crisis for Australia's students' and vowed to hold the government to account. 'But today, we agreed to not oppose the Bill as it makes its way through the parliament,' Ms Ley said. 'We do care about students who are struggling with the cost of living and said we would be positive where we can be and critical where we need to be.' Labor's Bill was central to its youth-focused re-election pitch. It would cut student debts by 20 per cent for some three million graduates or wipe off about $5500 from the average debt. The changes would also raise the repayment threshold for student loans from $54,000 to $67,000. Earlier, Education Minister Jason Clare told his Labor colleagues that he hoped the Bill would pass before question time. Originally published as MPs pass Labor's student debt relief
