Chalmers says Dutton’s budget reply lacks economic credibility – as it happened (2024)

We are wrapping up the blog for tonight. Here’s what made the news:

• The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, revealed Australia, in coordination with international partners, would be imposing financial sanctions on six bodies associated with North Korea’s arms exports to Russia.

• A pro-Palestinian protest encampment at Monash ended while the University of Queensland calls for an end to the encampment on its campus.

• Negotiations over the Melbourne university encampment remain in deadlock.

• Three A-League players were arrested this morning, after an investigation by the organised crime squad into alleged betting corruption under Strike Force Beaconview.

• Half a million Australians may have phones that won’t connect to triple zero after the 3G network shuts down, a situation the federal government says is “deeply concerning”.

• Alcohol consumption is decreasing across the country, but city-dwellers are curbing their drinking at higher rates than their regional counterparts, a study has found.

Enjoy your evening.

The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, has dismissed the opposition leader, Peter Dutton’s, budget reply speech as “unhinged” and lacking in economic credibility.

With parliament now on a break for a week, Chalmers has headed to Port Augusta in South Australia with the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, and South Australian state and federal colleagues to promote the government’s renewable energy transition agenda which it calls the Future Made in Australia. But the treasurer was also focused on criticising Dutton’s reply speech, delivered in parliament last night.

“All we got from Peter Dutton was the usual unhinged, nasty, nuclear negativity in the rant which he tried to pass off as a budget in reply,” Chalmers said. He accused the opposition leader of failing to explain how he would pay for the suite of measures he promised a future Coalition government would deliver, including more generous tax cuts and the construction of nuclear reactors at unspecified sites around Australia.

Dutton also promised to cut the number of incoming permanent migrants annually from 185,000 to 160,000 to address the nation’s housing shortage.

Tuesday’s federal budget capped migration at 185,000 places with most dedicated to skilled workers.

Chalmers said Dutton was just “scratching around for something to say in a budget reply speech”.

Here’s Amanda Meade’s weekly look at what is going on in Australian media.

AEC error reveals candidates’ addresses

The Australian Electoral Commission has temporarily taken down its Transparency Register that contains political donations and other financial disclosures after it was discovered that candidates’ postal addresses – including, in some instances, residential addresses – had been posted online for some candidates on their nomination form.

The AEC said it was communicating with those affected, and it was taken down as soon as the AEC became aware. The office of the information commissioner has been informed, and the AEC is investigating how it happened.

At this stage, 68 people are affected.

The AEC said it was not a cybersecurity breach and its systems were not compromised, but it was an internal process issue in the AEC’s IT environment.

The AEC said:

Privacy is a matter the AEC takes extremely seriously. We deeply regret what has occurred and we sincerely apologise to those people affected. The electoral commissioner will initiate a … external review led by an appropriately experienced person once initial investigation and remediation is complete.

Just to add to the previous post – a meeting between a handful of pro-Palestine protesters at the University of Melbourne and senior executives has failed to reach a resolution.

A group of protesters camped inside the university’s Arts West Building have defied the university’s request to depart, despite administrators threatening police action. A handful of students earlier on Friday met with Melbourne University acting provost Pip Nicholson and deputy vice-chancellor Mark Cassidy.

Speaking after the meeting, protester Dana Alshaer says the university “did not offer anything”.

They said that they’re willing to talk about transparency. We did not receive any single concrete answer.

Alshaer says the university has not provided the encampment with a specific deadline to leave the university.

The protesters did not rule out the university’s claim that “external actors” are involved in the encampment inside the Arts West Building.

University of Melbourne concerned at ‘intimidatory impact’ of pro-Palestine encampment

The University of Melbourne’s acting provost, Pip Nicholson, has told staff and students in an email that the university is “concerned and disappointed to see the refusal to leave the Arts West building on our Parkville campus”.

She said:

The continued occupation of university sites presents an unacceptable risk to the safety, security and work of our entire community. We remain deeply concerned about this activity, damage to university property and disruptive intent of some, including external actors, to our Parkville campus. There is no doubt that this group has underestimated their intimidatory impact on members of our community.

We are also concerned about the level of misinformation and disinformation being shared online, and I urge everyone, including protestors and media to consider what is being shared and to verify facts.

Nicholson said the final week of lessons for the semester will continue next week, and staff and students are reminded to carry their university IDs at all times to access buildings. She said the university continues to meet with student representatives and groups including those claiming to be leading the occupation, who the university met with this afternoon.

As we have always stated in relation to this matter, freedom of speech is respected and supported at the University of Melbourne and is central to our values and identity. However, any form of protest extending to sustained disruption for other students and staff, violence, property damage, threat or intimidation contravenes the university codes of conduct or law.

Monash University says a pro-Palestine encampment on its Clayton campus in Melbourne has ended.

In a statement, Monash University says encampment organisers notified the university on Friday that they “planned to pack up the encampment”:

All tents, banners and other remnants of the encampment have been removed by the encampment organisers with support from the university.

We will continue to work with our student and community leaders, and with staff, to ensure safety and security on campus and, importantly, to meet the academic and pastoral needs of our staff and students during this time.

Protesters hold press conference over university encampment

Pro-Palestine protesters at the University of Melbourne are holding a press conference at the Parkville campus a day after administrators threatened police action over an encampment inside a building.

A group of protesters have been camped inside the university’s Arts West building since Wednesday. Police have not been directed to intervene or remove protesters, the university has confirmed. A handful of students met with the university’s senior executives earlier on Friday.

Dana Alshaer of the University of Melbourne for Palestine group says they attempted to have an open dialogue with university executives:

We have been explicitly told they will not divest .. they have made it clear Australia’s national defence interests are the interests of the university.

Protester Mercedes Scott says the university is trying to intimidate students by threatening police action.

Gemma O’Toole says protesters will make a “collective decision” if police intervene to break up the encampment.

Activists post video showing cutting down statue of colonial premier and surgeon

Video of vandals cutting down the statue of a controversial Tasmanian colonial premier and surgeon has been posted on social media as police investigations continue, AAP reports.

The tribute to William Crowther was discovered on the ground next to its plinth at Franklin Square in Hobart on Wednesday morning, cut off at the ankles.

The words “what goes around” and “decolonise” were spray-painted on the plinth in red.

Crowther was in 1869 accused of removing and stealing the skull from the body of Aboriginal man William Lanne. He briefly served as premier in the 1870s.

Hobart City council in 2022 voted to have the statue removed and an appeal against the decision failed on Wednesday, mere hours after the statue was cut down.

A video showing people dressed in black using an angle grinder to cut the statue’s legs was posted online by Crym, which describes itself as a civil resistance youth movement.

The group says the video, shared on Thursday night, was provided anonymously.

“We can’t erase history, but we can tear down the horrible colonialists who have disgraced it until we wake up to the reality of colonisation on this continent,” the group said.

A Tasmania police spokeswoman said investigations into the matter were ongoing and no charges had yet been laid.

CCTV footage from the area is being examined.

Hospital beds to reopen as nurses reach in-principle agreement with Victorian government

Nurses have reached an in-principle agreement with the Victorian government and will reopen hospital beds as industrial action slows down, AAP reports.

Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation members had closed one in four beds and stopped one in four elective surgeries from going ahead as they ramped up their industrial action on Friday.

However, the union called off the escalated action just before 3pm after the parties reached an in-principle agreement.

Victorian branch secretary Lisa Fitzpatrick said the deal included an “improved wages, allowances and conditions offer”.

The commitment of our members across the state to their campaign has sharpened everyone’s focus on these negotiations and (the union) was always prepared to work around the clock.

Members will continue to participate in stage one of their industrial action, which involves wearing union T-shirts at work, refusing to work overtime and not completing paperwork.

Full details of the deal have not been made public and the union will keep the offer under wraps until a statewide meeting on Monday afternoon.

The union previously rejected a 3% pay rise with an annual $1500 payment.

The Victorian government has been contacted for comment.

The University of Queensland wants a “peaceful resolution” to the ongoing Israel-Palestine encampments on campus, according to a statement posted online on Friday.

Chancellor, Peter Varghese, said the university “cannot allow the encampments to continue indefinitely”.

The university senate met on Thursday. It agreed that vice-chancellor Deborah Terry should take all appropriate steps to protect students and staff from the “risk of disruption” during exams.

Terry said they had advised both camps on Friday that their “objective is to discontinue the camps as soon as possible”. She said the university is “continuing to engage with nominated protest representatives, to agree a peaceful resolution to the current camp arrangements”.

Two injured in incident south of Brisbane

Queensland Ambulance Services say two people were injured after a disturbance in Acacia Ridge south of Brisbane this afternoon.

Queensland police say they are responding to the disturbance, with emergency services called just before 2.30pm to Gregory Street and Rothesay Street. The location is a couple of blocks away from a state school.

An adult male has been transported to Princess Alexandra hospital in a serious condition, after sustaining stab wounds to the abdomen and back at the private residence.

Another man is currently being assessed with superficial wounds to the hand.

The incident is ongoing.

Current prescriptions have not been caught up in the MediSecure cyberattack, the national cyber security coordinator has said, but it has yet to be revealed how many people have had their personal information exposed.

Endangered glider’s death sparks new forests management debate

An endangered glider found dead near a fire break has reignited a conservation debate a year after a ban on native logging was announced.

Environmentalists who found the greater glider in the Yarra Ranges national park on Wednesday said a habitat-bearing tree had been felled in firebreak works despite their warnings.

“We specifically told the (Victorian) government that greater gliders were nesting in this tree,” said Blake Nisbet of Wildlife of the Central Highlands.

Instead of stepping in, they chose to knowingly kill endangered wildlife.

Forest Fire Management Victoria is maintaining existing fuel breaks in the national park and says removing trees poses a risk to firefighter safety.

The organisation is a branch of Victoria’s Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA), which said it will investigate the animal’s death.

Greater gliders and Leadbeater’s possums were at the centre of legal battles that led to a ban on Victorian native logging from the start of 2024 and the upcoming disbanding of state logging company VicForests, slated for June 30.

Greater glider possums make their habitats in multiple hollows, which take between 170 and 350 years to form.

“So the damage that’s been done today by DEECA in these actions will take up to the next 200 years to remedy,” Australian National University ecologist David Lindenmayer told AAP.

- Australian Associated Press

More on wastewater revealing a divide in alcohol consumption

Researchers also found socioeconomic status impacted drinking habits.

“What we found was that socioeconomically advantaged sites actually had higher consumption of alcohol but they’re actually decreasing at a faster rate than the lower socioeconomic status areas,” University of Queensland senior research fellow Dr Tschark said.

In lower socioeconomic areas, the rate of alcohol consumption decreased at a rate of 1%, while more advantaged communities had a 3% decline.

Wastewater was collected from 30 regional treatment plants and 20 city-based facilities, testing for traces of alcohol as part of the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission’s national wastewater drug monitoring program.

Tscharke said the samples were taken from every state and territory across Australia, representing about half the country’s population.

Researchers then used census data to compare patterns of alcohol consumption to remoteness and the community’s average socioeconomic status.

Tscharke said there could be a number of explanations for decreasing alcohol consumption, but further data would be needed to pinpoint those reasons.

Potentially this decrease is happening because there’s less people consuming alcohol or it could be that within the heavier drivers, that group is using less alcohol.

We can’t really separate any of those sorts of issues, and that’s where we’d need to cross-reference and bring in some survey information to understand the why behind it.

- Australian Associated Press

Alcohol consumption is decreasing across the country, but city-dwellers are curbing their drinking at higher rates than their regional counterparts, a study has found.

Wastewater samples from 50 sites across the country, collected over the past seven years, were analysed by researchers according to community socioeconomic status and remoteness.

The study found alcohol consumption is higher in regional and remote communities than in capital cities.

University of Queensland senior research fellow Dr Ben Tscharke said there was a decline in alcohol consumption in city areas of 4.5%, while regional and outer regional communities decreased consumption 2.4% and 3.5% respectively.

Tscharke said knowing the differences in alcohol consumption across regional and urban areas could help to tailor government responses.

“We may want to look at these differences and figure out if we want to act differently in different places,” he said.

It also shows that if there are actions that the government takes, we can actually see them in the wastewater and evaluate if they’ve worked or not based on changes in total consumption.

- Australian Associated Press

Penguins at risk

A once-thriving population of little penguins on a tourist island off Perth’s coast has plummeted to no more than 120 birds, with plans to build a container port in nearby foraging grounds further threatening the survival of the colony.

The latest population study on Penguin Island – 600 metres offshore and 50km south of Perth city – has revealed that penguin numbers have crashed by two-thirds in the past five years, sources say.

The little penguin population, called Weedee in Noongar, has declined by 92% since 2007.

A scientific report, commissioned by the local Rockingham council and detailing the extent of the problem, was provided to the council in late April before being passed to the state government. Guardian Australia has repeatedly requested the report, but neither office has made the findings public.

Read the full story: