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Campuses would shut down under One Nation plan, university peak body warns

Universities Australia warns One Nation’s plan to drastically cut down international students will lead to campuses shutting down, and domestic students missing out.

Pauline Hanson’s plan, released yesterday, suggested cutting the international student intake down to 100,000 visas per year and graduate visas down to 20,000 – a cut of more than 200,000 on current levels.

The Universities Australia boss, Luke Sheehy, accused One Nation of “joining the conga line in this furphy” and blaming international students in the migration debate.

He told ABC News:

double quotation markIf numbers actually materialised as One Nation proposed … you would see university campuses shut down, Australian students unable to get a place at university and thousands of university workers have their jobs put at risk.

Key events

• 1h ago

  ‘Up to the Coalition’ to team up with Labor on immigration, Chris Bowen says

• 1h ago

  Campuses would shut down under One Nation plan, university peak body warns

• 2h ago

  Hanson should apologise for ‘deeply hurtful’ comments, says McCarthy

• 3h ago

  Malinauskas still optimistic about steel making in South Australia

• 3h ago

  O’Neil defends transport minister’s top-tier Qantas membership

• 3h ago

  Barnaby Joyce says One Nation will pursue immigration policy ‘no matter the cost’

• 4h ago

  Andrew Hastie says Pauline Hanson hasn’t ‘had the courage’ to front media

• 4h ago

  Chris Bowen downplays reintroduction of fuel excise relief amid renewed surge in oil prices

• 4h ago

  Albanese speaks with King Charles

• 4h ago

  Welcome

Australia rises as US plunges in world democracy report

The rise of independents and teals and an underage social media ban have helped boost Australia’s ranking in one of the world’s leading democracy indexes, AAP reports.

At the same time, the United States’ standing has plummeted, with the Trump-era ransacking of institutions and standards dropping one of democracy’s leading lights to the ranks of also-rans.

The annual Global State of Democracy report, released on Tuesday, rates Australia very well across its assessment matrix.

Sweden-based organisation International IDEA charts nations across four main categories - representation, rights, rule of law, and participation - to assess their democratic health.

Overall, it’s ugly reading. Autocracies and repressive forces appear to be winning. For the 11th straight year, the report finds more countries recorded declines rather than improvements.

The most extensive global decline was in freedom of expression, with drops in a quarter of the 173 surveyed countries.

Judicial independence is at a 36-year-low globally, while press freedom and access to justice are at their lowest levels this century.

In pics: boy meets the PM after walking 500km for rural paediatric care

There are some genuinely inspiring and incredible people that walk through the halls of parliament, and today that’s 12-year-old Dusty Langby with his mum, Sarah, who have just completed a more than 540km walk to Canberra.

They’ve been raising money for charity Little Wings and awareness to deliver paediatric care to bush communities, walking from the town of Warren, north-west of Dubbo in New South Wales to Capital Hill. Little Wings provides free flights and transportation for seriously ill children and their families in regional and remote areas.

Dusty, his mum, and nurses Christine Letton and Nichole Callan (who also made the journey by foot) met with Anthony Albanese in his office.

The government has this morning committed more than $1m to the charity.

In a statement, Albanese said Dusty’s journey has been “extraordinary”:

double quotation markMy government will match every dollar Dusty has raised so his incredible effort can make an even bigger difference. On top of that, my Government will invest another $1 million to keep Little Wings flying and help regional families get their children the care they need. Dusty has shown that you’re never too young to make a difference and we’re proud to back Little Wings and the work they do.

Cait Kelly

People over 40 the largest single age group in share house accommodation

Share housing has stopped being a stage people pass through, with people in their early 20s now in the minority, according to research conducted by Homerun, an app that manages share house expenditure.

The study of 3,562 Australians living in or hosting a share house revealed that the largest single age group in Australian share accommodation is people aged 40 and over, who make up 44% of respondents.

Key findings were:

• 17% already own a home and let rooms in it, rising to 26% of the over 40s.

• 35% have shared for five years or more, and 18% for more than 10.

• 69% did not expect, at 20, to still be share housing at their current age.

• 31% never expect to own a home. A further 11% put ownership more than a decade away.

• 75% say the high cost of housing has extended how long they will keep sharing.

Scott Mckeon, founder of Homerun said:

double quotation markSharehouses are underrepresented and underserviced. Co-living with people you are not related to comes with its own problems, and very little is built for them.

Running a household is work, and it is harder between independent adults. Splitting the finances, agreeing on what clean means, keeping the shared things stocked, and finding someone new when a housemate moves out.

Cait Kelly

Drug dogs on Oxford Street causing risks for LGBTQ+, advocates say

Redfern Legal Centre has condemned repeated raids by NSW police on Oxford Street venues as alleged harassment of the LGBTQ+ community that fails to disrupt drug supply while causing real social harm and health risks.

Over the weekend, police with drug-detection dogs were seen at several venues with people asked to remove clothing and questions about why people were in bathrooms.

RLC’s police accountability practice lead, Rian Terrell, said:

double quotation markNSW police’s repeated decisions by NSW Police to deploy drug dogs to target patrons of venues on Oxford Street amount to [alleged] targeted harassment of the LGBTQIA+ community.

This is particularly concerning given the police watchdog, the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, directed NSW Police to reopen a misconduct investigation into its actions targeting Sydney LGBTQIA+ venues just last month.

That NSW Police chose to raid Oxford Street again, when that investigation has not concluded, raises further concerns about NSW Police lack of accountability.

Use of drug dogs, wide scale strip searches and searches do little to disrupt drug supply and deter drug use.

The 2024 NSW Drug Summit made several recommendations, including related to the use of drug dogs, many of which have not been accepted or implemented by the NSW Government.

‘No plans’ for further fuel excise cut, says Marles

The calls for another cut to the fuel excise are again growing as petrol prices continue growing, but the government is hosing down speculation of price relief.

Labor said the previous cuts to the excise were always designed to be temporary.

The deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, told News24 earlier:

double quotation markWe don’t have plans for it. We are watching what’s playing out in the Middle East, clearly … Our focus has been in respect of ensuring fuel supply in Australia, and we’ve been able to do that from the moment that this conflict broke out.

Sarah Martin

One Nation abandons gas plan in favour of policy benefiting Rinehart

One Nation has come under fire for quietly shelving support for a new domestic gas reservation policy in preference for a policy that favours the party’s billionaire patron, Gina Rinehart.

The Albanese government has announced it will establish a new reservation policy for Australia’s east coast, requiring gas exporters to supply a portion of the gas they produce to the domestic market. The policy is aimed at “modestly” supplying the domestic market to put downward pressure on prices for consumers.

Pauline Hanson moved a Senate motion as recently as March in support of a domestic gas reserve, saying it would “increase the supply of gas and lower the price of electricity directly”.

But the reservation plan has been vehemently opposed by Senex, a $900m company that is 49% owned by Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting, and 51% owned by the Korean company Posco.

In June, One Nation abandoned its longstanding support when it unveiled its gas plans after “consultation with industry and stakeholders”, saying the policy risked “killing domestic Australian gas companies”.

Read the full story here:

‘Up to the Coalition’ to team up with Labor on immigration, Chris Bowen says

Caitlin Cassidy

Chris Bowen says that Labor is willing to work with the opposition to bring down immigration levels, while adding it was “up to the Coalition” to pass legislation on it.

The energy minister was asked on Monday’s 7.30 program about reports that the prime minister and opposition leader, Angus Taylor, had met last week to discuss a Coalition proposal to link net overseas migration to housing completion.

Immigration has been a hotly contested issue within the Labor party, which culminated late last month when the prime minister announced a backflip on proposed cuts to Australia’s refugee intake.

Bowen said if the Coalition wanted to see immigration settings “brought down and improved, we are happy to work with them”.

double quotation markWe need the legislative pathway through the Senate in particular to get that done … Ultimately, the Coalition has to decide. Do they really just want to talk about immigration or do they want to actually vote for improvements to immigration? … If you want to be a party of government, it does need coming together from time to time to work on difficult issues.

Pressed on whether Labor backed the housing idea, Bowen maintained “what we need to do is get immigration down” after post-Covid peaks and said there was “more work to do”.

Campuses would shut down under One Nation plan, university peak body warns

Universities Australia warns One Nation’s plan to drastically cut down international students will lead to campuses shutting down, and domestic students missing out.

Pauline Hanson’s plan, released yesterday, suggested cutting the international student intake down to 100,000 visas per year and graduate visas down to 20,000 – a cut of more than 200,000 on current levels.

The Universities Australia boss, Luke Sheehy, accused One Nation of “joining the conga line in this furphy” and blaming international students in the migration debate.

He told ABC News:

double quotation markIf numbers actually materialised as One Nation proposed … you would see university campuses shut down, Australian students unable to get a place at university and thousands of university workers have their jobs put at risk.

Marles downplays reports of OpenAI ultimatum over copyright

Richard Marles says reporting that OpenAI has issued an ultimatum to Australia – that the government must water down copyright protections or the company will refuse to invest in domestic AI training or renewable energy – is overstated.

Marles says he recently met OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei in San Francisco and the fact that they want copyright protection for creatives watered down is “not news”.

double quotation markI think that’s overstating, actually, the comments that have been made … It’s not new that there are challenges in respect of copyright, which has been raised by those companies. All of this was articulated by the prime minister in his speech in July.

We do want to see our country take this opportunity. It’s a historic opportunity for our nation, but we need to be doing it in a way which protects rights holders – and that means news organisations, it means creatives. But actually, I think you can do both.

Asked if that language used was “threatening” the government, Marles replies:

double quotation markWell, I actually don’t think it’s at the level that you’ve described it. I mean, I think the person in question was making the point that copyright is an issue which needs to be looked at in the context of OpenAI doing training in Australia. That’s not news.

Defence recruitment goes online and reaches a 16-year high in Australia

Recruit smarter, not harder, says the deputy PM and defence minister, Richard Marles, announcing the highest defence recruitment intake in 16 years.

He credits a lot of it to meeting young people where they’re at – which is of course, online.

(I guess the release of Top Gun: Maverick itself in 2022 didn’t do enough to cajole people to join the air force.)

Marles tells News24:

double quotation markIt’s the largest defence force we’ve now operated in a quarter of a century, and recruiting 8,100 people in a year as the largest intake in 16 years. And when we came to government, the defence force was shrinking – in the last year of the Coalition government it actually shrank by 1,400 people. So it is a big turnaround.

We are recruiting much smarter, we are doing our advertisements where young people actually are online – so we’re doing less on TV, but more online, very much targeting young people where they are.

Marles adds that the time it takes to be recruited – between expressing interest and putting on a uniform – is also decreasing, though he says it’s still too long.

Hanson should apologise for ‘deeply hurtful’ comments, says McCarthy

Malarndirri McCarthy says Pauline Hanson should apologise for resurfaced comments calling First Nations Australians “primitive”.

The minister for Indigenous Australians says the condemnation of Hanson from across the political spectrum – including Indigenous Coalition senators Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Kerrynne Liddle, as well as independent Lidia Thorpe shows the breadth of hurt.

Asked whether the Senate would censure Hanson for the comments (something it has done previously), McCarthy says the One Nation leader should be upfront and apologise.

double quotation markI want to put it on the record that for the first time you have seen all four Indigenous senators from across the aisles come together united on this, and I think that speaks volumes as to why Senator Hanson should apologise.

Clearly the Senate can act, but I am personally calling out to Senator Hanson saying this is important. What you said is deeply hurtful. It’s completely wrong. We have First Nations people right across Australia who have achieved tremendous skills, who have run for Australia, fought for Australia in the wars, who have excelled in the arts, in the music, in all sorts of spheres …

Those comments were completely baseless. They harm. They dehumanise First Nations people in Australia.

Whyalla closure ‘nothing to do with energy prices’, says Ayres

The industry minister, Tim Ayres has defended the government’s energy transition, and swatted away criticisms from the opposition that the blast furnace failure at Whyalla is a result of high electricity prices.

He tells ABC’s RN Breakfast:

double quotation markYesterday Matt Canavan and Andrew Hastie pointing to energy prices as a problem with the blast furnace, it’s got nothing to do with that, it’s got nothing to do with the regulatory framework. It’s got everything to do with the previous owner who has underinvested in that facility.

Ayres is also asked how much money was spent to fix the blast furnace whose closure was announced yesterday – resulting in the loss of more than 500 jobs. He doesn’t have an answer but says it would be in the “many millions”.

Ayres says it’s hard to separate at this point how much taxpayer money was spent to keep it afloat against the money supporting the rest of the operation.

double quotation markIn terms of fixing the old furnace, it would be many millions of dollars have gone into … I don’t have the number pulled out of the funding for the administration, because of course, the administration supports all of the workers’ wages as well. And it’s pretty hard, I think, today to disaggregate that expenditure.

There have been hundreds of safety and engineering failures as a consequence of the previous owners’ maladministration and underinvestment. It has been all hands to the pump here since February, and in particular over the last six months or so, these efforts around the blast furnace, when everybody knew that there wasn’t a forever future for the blast furnace, this has been a heroic effort.

Hanson comments about Indigenous Australians ‘appalling’, says Duniam

Jonno Duniam has also been asked to weigh in on resurfaced comments by Pauline Hanson about Indigenous Australians.

Duniam tells RN Breakfast the comments are “appalling”.

double quotation markWhat an appalling comment to make, frankly, to lump an entire group of people together and just cast them in that way. I don’t know who in a leadership position in this country thinks that’s okay … But Pauline Hanson, in one fell swoop, has decided to say everyone who is of Indigenous heritage is primitive.

I don’t see how that is a conclusion you can reach. And I think it says more about Pauline than we had previously realised.

Duniam says One Nation immigration provides no answers and no details

The shadow home affairs minister, Jonno Duniam, says One Nation lobbed its policy out into the public yesterday with no detail and then refused to answer any detailed questions about it – noting Pauline Hanson didn’t even do a press conference for the announcement.

In contrast, he says the Coalition’s migration plan, which is still being worked on in the background, will be properly costed. He says it’s now just “weeks” away.

MPs yesterday said One Nation’s plan for net-negative overseas migration over three years would punt the country into a recession.

Speaking to RN Breakfast a little earlier this morning, Duniam said:

double quotation markWhen you don’t have costings, like One Nation don’t, when you don’t have economic modelling about what impacts this will have on our economy, like One Nation don’t, when you can’t tell us exactly what sort of numbers will be delivered out of their policy like One Nation’s doesn’t, then people need to ask questions.

Now, when ours is out, when our policy is out, it will be fully costed. The economic and human impacts will be there for all to see and it will be a robust policy, not just a press release.