HATE SPEECH LAWS
Parliament returns tomorrow for potentially the last sitting fortnight before the federal election and such is the amount Labor hopes to get done — plus the amount the Coalition is calling for them to do — it’s among the lead stories on pretty much every news site this morning.
The AAP reports stronger hate speech protections are set to become “the focus of federal Parliament as escalating antisemitic attacks spark calls for action”, with Guardian Australia reminding readers the government’s hate crimes legislation was first introduced by Labor back in September. The site reports that while Labor and the Coalition are said to be keen to reach a deal to show the public they are cracking down on antisemitism, the legislation is not guaranteed a smooth passage.
AAP says the opposition wants the legislation to be strengthened, with shadow attorney-general Michaelia Cash planning to move an amendment to cover people who threaten attacks against places of worship, while the Labor government believes there are already adequate provisions in the bill. The opposition is also moving to put in place mandatory minimum prison sentences for terrorism, AAP adds.
The Australian Financial Review says the Coalition is calling on Labor to implement eight different steps when Parliament resumes, including reforming “incitement to violence” laws, adding antisemitic conduct as a feature of the character test for visas, and rolling out an advertising campaign to combat antisemitism and extremism.
“This is a test of Anthony Albanese’s leadership. He must take strong action to stamp out antisemitism,” opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said.
The ABC reports NSW Police are searching for three men believed to be connected to what is being treated as an antisemitic attack on a group of young women in Sydney’s east on Saturday night.
Speaking to ABC’s Insiders yesterday, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton hit out at the major tech companies amid fears young people are being radicalised online. “As [Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Director-General] Mike Burgess would point out, a young person sitting in front of a computer screen can be indoctrinated over a week or two because of the constant videos and bombardment of propaganda,” he said.
Guardian Australia reports an online network for neo-Nazis has been hit with counterterrorism sanctions. Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has announced the sanctions on Terrorgram, which Guardian Australia described as “a network of groups that use encrypted platforms such as Telegram to share radical white supremacist content. The group promotes militant accelerationism, which calls for violent acts to destabilise society”.
The AFR says using the platform will now be a criminal offence, with penalties including prison and fines. The Sydney Morning Herald reports it is the first time the government has imposed counterterrorism financing sanctions on an entity based entirely online.
“This demonstrates the Albanese government’s commitment to disrupting the activities of terrorists and violent extremists and preventing them from recruiting and radicalising people online. There is no place in Australia for antisemitism, hatred or violence,” Wong said.
The SMH says NSW Police refused to comment at the weekend on “an unproven theory” floated by Dutton that the force had declined to share details of the discovery of a caravan containing explosives in greater Sydney due to fears of leaks from the PM’s office. In reply, Albanese did not detail when he was told of the discovery, declaring: “I do not talk about operational matters for an ongoing investigation.”
A number of Dutton’s comments on Sunday have generated column inches this morning. On Insiders, the Coalition leader vowed to cut “wasteful” government spending but said he won’t detail his plans until after the federal election, ABC reports.
“We need to sit down and look through an ERC [expenditure review committee] process, which would be the normal course of things. We’ll do that in government,” Dutton said.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers described Dutton’s lack of detail on the spending cuts as “extraordinary”.
“Peter Dutton has got some very serious questions to answer this week and the week after, he should start by telling people what these cuts are and what they mean,” the AFR quotes Chalmers as saying.
“His secret agenda for cuts can only mean one thing, and that is, Australians will be worse off. They would already be worse off if he had his way. They’ll be much worse off if he wins the election, and that is part of what the election is going to be all about.”
The Age highlights the ongoing row over Dutton’s nuclear energy plans and the project’s alleged costings. On Insiders, Dutton repeated his much-debated claim his plan would lower prices, stating: “That’s the economics of it. All other variables being equal, if you have a 44% reduction in the overall cost to deliver that model, that is going to translate into that price reduction for households and for businesses, and that’s what we must do. You would expect a 44% reduction or of that order being passed through in energy bill relief.”
In response, Smart Energy Council chief executive John Grimes said: “We know that power bills are going to soar for all Australians because Peter Dutton wants to cap cheap, clean renewable energy and substitute it with expensive, unreliable, polluting coal and gas, while we wait a couple of decades to build their nuclear fantasies.”
TRUMP TARIFFS
US President Donald Trump’s recently announced tariffs dominate the international coverage this morning.
As The Guardian reminds us, on Saturday the 78-year-old “signed off on threatened 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada and hit China with a 10% tariff in addition to already enacted levies”. They are due to come into effect from midnight on Tuesday.
On Sunday, Trump said Americans may feel economic “pain” from his move but claimed it would be “worth the price” to secure American interests.
The BBC reports Canada and Mexico are set to bring in retaliatory tariffs, while China has said it will file a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization against the US for its “wrongful practice” and will take countermeasures to “safeguard its own rights and interests”.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Sunday: “Now is the time to choose products made right here in Canada.” Meanwhile, France’s Industry Minister Marc Ferracci said “it’s clear we have to react” to proposed Trump’s EU tariffs, and Italy’s Finance Minister Adolfo Urso called on the EU to avoid “triggering a devastating trade war”, the BBC adds.
Trade Minister Don Farrell told the AFR he has reached out to his US counterpart Howard Lutnick (who has yet to be officially confirmed in the role), though no official discussion was had. “As soon as is humanly possible, I will be talking with the Americans,” Senator Farrell said. “My objective is to be cool, calm and collected, as we were with the Chinese, and not panic.”
At the weekend, former Australian prime minister Paul Keating had plenty to say on Trump, telling the AFR: “Donald Trump believes in American nationalism but he does not believe in American internationalism.”
“Though he lacks an analytic framework, his intuition pushes him past crude US policy dressed up as some rules-based order. He knows the key US rule is ‘snatch and grab’, a policy he understands and is okay with but will not eulogise,” he adds. “Trump’s presidency could be central to him engineering avoidance of a third world war which the Democrats, in their manic commitment to primacy, were otherwise sliding towards — using Ukraine from 2014 as a US surrogate to contain Russia and their mealy-mouthed claim that China represented a military threat to the United States, when in fact China intends to attack no other state — certainly not the US.”
Meanwhile, The Age states this morning “tens of thousands of dollars were wiped from the value of homes across Sydney and Melbourne last month” in response to high interest rates and the size of mortgages. The paper adds: “Amid warnings that US President Donald Trump’s tariff war could keep Australian interest rates higher for longer, CoreLogic figures show the median value of a Sydney house fell 0.4% in January to $1.47 million. This took the decline over the past three months to 1.6%.”
Reminder: Trump has been president for just 14 days.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
Researchers have documented the tallest and largest trees in Tasmania, with scientists dubbing the state a “global hotspot of gigantism in plants”.
Guardian Australia reports the study, published in the Australian Journal of Botany, recorded 18 trees over 90 metres, including one known as “Centurion” measuring 96 metres.
Centurion is an Eucalyptus regnans, also known as mountain ash. The site says the tree used to be the second tallest in the world, behind “Hyperion”, a coastal redwood in California that is 115.6 metres tall. However, bushfire damage in 2019 resulted in Centurion losing four meters of height and therefore slipping down the ranking.
Co-author of the research Dr David Bowman, a professor of fire science at the University of Tasmania, is quoted as saying the Tasmanian eucalypts are the “kings and queens of the forest”. He added the trees were achieving “the physiological limit of what a giant tree can be”.
Tasmania’s “cool nights, beautiful growing conditions in the day, an abundance of moisture” apparently help the trees grow to such an enormous size.
Say What?
And I say to any right-wing leader who wants to take their cues or take their notes from the MAGA movement in the USA that they have to come through me, come through the Victorian government and come through the Victorian community first who very resoundingly stand in support of our LGBTIQA+ community.
Jacinta Allan
The premier of Victoria spoke on Sunday as she took part in the 30th anniversary of the Midsumma Pride March in Melbourne.
CRIKEY RECAP
Is Peter Dutton in any position to have a dig at the prime minister for his new $4.3 million clifftop house given the opposition leader’s extensive property investments over the years?
After Anthony Albanese drew a sketch of Dutton on Nova 93.7 last year that looked a lot like a potato, the opposition leader returned fire when he appeared on the station this week and drew a picture of a clifftop house, with a message beside it wishing Albo a happy (and imminent?) retirement.
The prime minister’s decision last October to buy a beach house in Copacabana with his fiancé Jodie was tin-eared given the housing crisis, but it was probably impolitic of Dutton to join the pile-on given how many properties he’s owned and profited from in the past.
Privilege is having its political moment. The protection of privilege by those who possess it is currently the driving force of politics in the United States — where inclusion is blamed for everything from climate crisis-induced fires to air disasters — and a core part of the Coalition’s efforts to turn Anthony Albanese into a one-term prime minister here.
“I think a lot of young males feel disenfranchised and feel ostracised,” Peter Dutton says. “I think there’s just a point where people are fed up. They’re pushing back and saying, ‘Well, why am I being overlooked at work for a job, you know, three jobs running when I’ve got, you know, a partner at home, and she’s decided to stay at home with three young kids…”
While one’s heart breaks for the men whose lazy partners won’t work as well as raise three toddlers, why are men being overlooked in this scenario? Because, Dutton says, they are being discriminated against “on the basis of gender or race”. And that’s come from “a lot of universities who have worked on this. I think it’s a movement of the left”.
But the war on diversity and inclusion is only the latest front in a longer war of resentment and anger on the part of white males toward their perceived loss of privilege. Diversity and inclusion are only standing in for the longer-term historical villain: free market economics — a form of economics that Dutton has spent most of his life championing.
Earlier this month, when Elon Musk made a gesture at Donald Trump’s post-inauguration event that forced copyeditors globally into pretzeling contortions trying to avoid describing it as a Nazi salute, it wasn’t all that out of character for the tech billionaire.
But as we noted when the MAGA-right started heavily embracing Musk back in 2022, he’s not always been the most natural fit for their politics. How did he journey from a self-described “moderate” who voted Democrat, sparred with Donald Trump and talked about climate change, to the “dark, gothic MAGA” figure we now see?
READ ALL ABOUT IT
North Queensland floods spark mass evacuations and blackouts, more rain forecast (ABC)
BoM diverted hundreds of millions to cover cost blowouts (The Saturday Paper)
NSW minister apologises after asking chauffeur to drive 446km for Australia Day weekend lunch (Guardian Australia)
‘I think we’ll bring it back’: Dutton makes private pledge to review $5m investor visa (The Sydney Morning Herald) ($)
Luka Doncic trade to Lakers is most shocking in NBA history (Sports Illustrated)
The Brutalist’s AI controversy, explained (Vanity Fair) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Anthony Albanese keeps campaigning in traditional mode, but Peter Dutton steals most of his oxygen — Laura Tingle (ABC): There is also talk of some big (still secret) legislative push by Labor, which surprised even some of the prime minister’s colleagues when he mentioned it this week.
One thing that the government won’t be bringing back is gambling reforms, though the Greens’ Senator Sarah Hanson-Young will try to embarrass it on that on Wednesday with her own bill built on the reforms championed by late Labor MP Peta Murphy.
The government keeps campaigning in traditional mode: policy and infrastructure announcements and leaving the “values” discussion to the Coalition.
It’s almost three weeks until we find out whether there will be an interest rate cut.
With Dutton stealing most of the day-to-day oxygen, the government has to do a bit more than look like it is biding its time until then.
Gorilla about to devour Labor’s green dream — Chris Uhlmann (The Australian): It would be wrong to assume the resurrection of Trump in the US necessarily signals a change of government here. Australia is not America, our electoral system pushes politics to the centre. Here the permanent administrative state rules. Here much of business competes for government largesse. Here our mostly urban community is disconnected from its sources of energy, food and wealth. Here radical change is hard.
It is tough for an Australian politician painting by numbers to compete with a man who, quite literally, wants his face carved on Mount Rushmore. But the least we should expect in this election year is a clear idea from both Labor and the opposition of how they intend to deal with a radically changing world. Because the one we knew is coming unstuck.
