WORLD REACTS TO TRUMP’S GAZA PLANS
There’s not really a fun and friendly way into the news agenda this morning, so we’ll just dive straight in.
US President Donald Trump’s claim that America could “take over” Gaza and create a “Riviera of the Middle East” has led to condemnation from leaders around the world, the ABC reports.
Trump made the comments during a White House press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday and said: “I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza. I think that Gaza has been very unlucky for them. They’ve lived like hell. Gaza is not a place for people to be living, and the only reason they want to go back, and I believe this strongly, is because they have no alternative.”
The Australian reports Trump said the US would rebuild Gaza with “economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area”. He also did not rule out using US troops. Regarding filling any security vacuum, Trump said: “We’ll do what is necessary. If it’s necessary, we’ll do that.”
The Financial Times reports Trump’s comments “have been met with anger across the Arab world, and raised fears of reigniting conflict in the region”.
Saudi Arabia was quick to denounce Trump’s comments, the paper said, with the country’s foreign ministry saying it would “not establish diplomatic relations with Israel” without an independent Palestinian state. It said its position was “non-negotiable and not subject to compromises”.
Jordan and Egypt have also rejected Trump’s proposals, having already dismissed his suggestion they should accept displaced Palestinian refugees, the FT said.
Jordan’s Royal Court posted on X that King Abdullah had emphasised “the need to put a stop to settlement expansion, expressing rejection of any attempts to annex land and displace the Palestinians”.
Egyptian Foreign Affairs Minister Badr Abdelatty said aid needed to be delivered to Gaza quicker “without Palestinians leaving the Gaza Strip, especially with their attachment to their land and their refusal to leave it”.
Reuters quotes senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri as saying the call for Gazans to leave is an “expulsion from their land”.
“We consider them (the plans) a recipe for generating chaos and tension in the region. Our people in the Gaza Strip will not allow these plans to pass, and what is required is to end the (Israeli) occupation and aggression against our people, not to expel them from their land.”
The Guardian quotes Palestinians returning to the remains of their homes, with Abu Firas — whose home in Khan Younis has been destroyed — saying: “We would rather die here than leave this land. No amount of money in the world can replace your homeland”.
Elsewhere, China’s Foreign Ministry said: “China hopes all parties will take ceasefire and post-conflict governance as an opportunity to bring the Palestinian issue back on the right track of political settlement based on the two-state solution.”
Türkiye’s Foreign Affairs Minister Hakan Fidan called Trump’s plans “unacceptable”, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow backed a two-state solution and Germany’s Foreign Affairs Minister Annalena Baerbock said the plan would “lead to new suffering and new hatred”.
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer also said Palestinians in Gaza “must be allowed home, they must be allowed to rebuild, and we should be with them in that rebuild — on the way to a two-state solution”, the FT adds.
And so the reaction goes on and on.
Meanwhile, the BBC reports Trump said in the last couple of hours “everybody loves it” when asked by reporters in the Oval Office about his plans.
One obvious retort, as always with Trump, is does he really mean what he’s saying? (The other, more important question could also be, does he actually understand what he’s saying?) Regardless, as the above round-up shows, the seriousness of his threats requires immediate responses, with some — such as the Democrats in the US — willing to go further than others in criticising the president.
The Financial Times says Starmer addressed MPs on the issue and avoided direct criticism of Trump, but evoked “the image of thousands of Palestinians walking, literally walking through the rubble, to try to find their homes and their communities in Gaza” and called for a “sustained” ceasefire in the enclave.
In Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday: “I’ve said before that I don’t intend to have a running commentary on the president of the United States’ statements”, the ABC reports. “What I would say is that Australia’s position is the same as it was this morning, as it was last year and it was 10 years ago and it was under the Howard government. The Australian government supports, on a bipartisan basis, a two-state solution in the Middle East.”
Liberal MP Julian Leeser told Sky News the opposition’s policy on a two-state solution for Palestine and Israel remained unchanged, Guardian Australia highlights. It also quotes the Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network’s president, Nasser Mashni, as saying the Australian government “must not shy away from confronting the menace of the US and Israel head-on”.
“Australia must not sit by in silence while the leaders of the US and Israel openly and in broad daylight incite genocidal violence against, and the permanent displacement of, Palestinians,” he said.
CHINA REACTS TO DEEPSEEK BAN
Yesterday we mentioned that Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek had been banned from Australian federal government computers and mobiles with the Home Affairs Department deeming it “an unacceptable risk” to national security.
Unsurprisingly, Beijing had something to say on the issue. The ABC reported on Wednesday night China’s foreign ministry declared: “The Chinese government … has never and will never require enterprises or individuals to illegally collect or store data.”
The statement called the Australian government’s DeepSeek ban the “politicisation of economic, trade and technological issues”, which China said it opposes.
The ABC adds: “According to the [Albanese] government, the decision follows advice from national security and intelligence agencies that determined the platform posed ‘an unacceptable risk to Australian government technology’.”
The ban was announced as federal Parliament sits for what could be the final sitting fortnight of this term. We’ve been flagging all week the different legislation set to be passed, negotiated, and dumped.
This morning, the government’s Hate Crimes bill continues to generate plenty of coverage, with the ABC saying the legislation is set to be voted on by the House of Representatives today. The broadcaster says the government has agreed to Coalition demands for mandatory minimum jail sentences for terror crimes and the display of hate symbols, “paving the way” for the bill to be passed.
The ABC reports Labor has agreed to mandatory minimum sentences of six years for terror offences, three years for financing terrorism and one year for displaying hate symbols.
“Let’s not lose sight of this, we as a Parliament, on the precipice now of putting in place the toughest laws against hate speech that Australia has ever had,” Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said on Wednesday night.
Guardian Australia states the move “marks a significant departure from Labor’s own national policy platform, which opposes minimum sentencing laws”.
Greens leader Adam Bandt said while his party had supported the original bill it had “very real concerns” with the inclusion of mandatory minimum sentencing laws.
“This is a clear deviation from principles that the government has espoused and, what’s more, it is utterly unnecessary. Now, because the opposition has asked for it, we’re seeing substantial amendments being put forward at the last minute, just because the opposition has asked for it, when the bill could have got through anyway,” he said.
One piece of government legislation that remains unresolved is the government’s proposals to overhaul electoral laws, with Guardian Australia reporting the crossbench still fears a “major party stitch-up” on donations and political spending.
The legislation had been due to be debated in the Senate today but has now been pushed into next week. The site says the Coalition has yet to indicate whether it will support the reforms.
Finally, the ABC reports Perth Lord Mayor Basil Zempilas has been ordered to apologise for using his mayoral Facebook account to promote his WA election campaign.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
As someone who needs eight pints of coffee in the morning before I can function, a new piece of scientific research published this week piqued my interest.
Apparently, people start the day in the best frame of mind and end it in the worst.
The Guardian said the study, published in the journal BMJ Mental Health, is the most comprehensive of its kind. “The results showed that happiness, life satisfaction, and worthwhile ratings were all higher on Mondays and Fridays than on Sundays, while happiness was also higher on Tuesdays. There was no evidence that loneliness differed across days of the week,” the site said.
The study, led by University College London, also found mental health is best in the summer.
The research was an observational study, so cannot establish cause, The Guardian highlights. However, the changes in well-being through the day could be due to physiological changes associated with the body clock, researchers said. “For example, cortisol [a hormone that regulates mood, motivation and fear] peaks shortly after waking and reaches its lowest levels around bedtime,” they said.
I guess my question for the scientists is — did you speak to people with young children? Because I know quite a few parents who might disagree with the notion that the early morning chaos is the best time of the day…
Say What?
The [other] sobering part for me was speaking with the other envoys. When they spoke about what was happening in say France or Germany, the country that was on everyone’s lips was Australia. We’ve made it onto the international map for all the wrong reasons.
Jillian Segal
The antisemitism envoy spoke to the ABC about the conversations she had at the International Holocaust Remembrance Day event in Auschwitz last week.
CRIKEY RECAP
As the election draws ever closer, staffer group chats are heating up with talk about how to make money off democracy, according to sources speaking to Crikey.
Betting on the federal election is normalised, commonplace and bipartisan, according to sources from all sides of politics speaking on the condition of anonymity.
“It is … extremely prevalent in the Nats and the Libs,” one former Coalition staffer said. “It probably accounts for one-third of all group chat messages.”
“Can you put in your story that being a staffer is fucking hell, and we deserve our insider trading for all the shit we cop from our bosses?”
The former staffer clarified they did not consider staffers betting on election outcomes to constitute insider trading: “We live in a democracy. We don’t rig elections.”
Readers may not be surprised to hear that Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles keeps a golf club in his ministerial office at Parliament House and that he occasionally has a swing with it. After all, Marles is a golf tragic with a well-known taste for playing the world’s top courses.
But this is no ordinary golf club leaning against his office wall. Open Politics and Crikey understand it is a gift from a top-ranked Australian male professional golfer from around 2023 that has been valued at several thousand dollars. A plaque denotes its significance, as does the fact Marles sometimes brings the club up in conversations with visitors.
Marles also displays in his office a cricket bat autographed by Indian superstar batsman Virat Kohli that India’s External Affairs Minister Dr S. Jaishankar gave Marles in October 2022. The bat has been valued at around a couple of thousand dollars.
The deputy prime minister hasn’t declared the club or bat to the Register of Members’ Interests as he is required to for gifts valued at more than $300 from private sources and $750 from government sources. An MP who “knowingly fails” to declare an interest is guilty under the register rules of serious contempt of the House of Representatives and “shall be dealt with accordingly”.
We’ve been told Marles “surrendered” the club and bat to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C), making use of a feature of the Australian government’s gift guidelines that allow the department to then loan gifts back to the minister.
Pilots who spoke to Crikey also remain frustrated with the poor state of the airline’s fleet, with the condition of planes and the availability of parts resulting in delays and cancellations.
“The fleet is still in a rather sad state,” one engineer said. ”A330 engines too — we’re waiting for four or five engines to be replaced. Not much has changed.”
Fleet issues have impacted one of the core benefits staff say they have had working at Qantas: travel. “It is increasingly difficult to get not just a premium cabin but even an economy seat,” one pilot said, noting that while it was always more difficult during summer holidays, there were waitlists of dozens of staff in places like Singapore in recent weeks.
As for the new uniforms, a number of staff Crikey spoke to hoped history would not repeat itself after the mistakes of the airline’s last uniform overhaul 12 years ago. The “Star Trek” look was widely derided, but the main complaint was that the use of too much synthetic fibre made the uniforms uncomfortable, particularly in any heat.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Australian foreign aid workers fear ‘deaths and suffering’ will result from Trump’s halt to USAid (The Guardian)
Sweden mourns victims of deadliest gun attack, suspect’s motive unknown (Reuters)
Sam Kerr: Police treated me differently because of colour of my skin (The Times) ($)
‘It’s not 2022 anymore’: How teal MPs are reshaping their pitch (AFR)
Women with endometriosis earn less, research shows (BBC)
Aga Khan, philanthropist and leader of Ismaili Muslims, dies aged 88 (The Financial Times) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Trump just dressed up ethnic cleansing as a real estate opportunity, and blew up ‘America First’ — Matthew Knott (The Sydney Morning Herald): The leader of the free world advocates ethnic cleansing and dresses it up as a golden real estate opportunity. Here’s the dire place we find ourselves just three weeks into the second Trump administration.
Fresh from calling for the annexation of Canada, takeover of Greenland and seizure of the Panama Canal, Trump has now turned his imperial gaze to Gaza.
With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu standing by his side for the first visit by a foreign leader since Trump’s return to office, the president called for the United States to take ownership of the Gaza Strip. The two million Palestinians who live there would be moved to neighbouring Arab countries, with the battered enclave turned, according to Trump, into “the Riviera of the Middle East”.
Trapped by the need to work with Trump, Australia’s Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong feel they cannot say what they really think about his outlandish idea.
Having nothing to say on Donald Trump’s Gaza takeover plan doesn’t cut it, Anthony Albanese — Simon Benson (The Australian): Clearly Albanese will have a view, as will every world leader. And his view would presumably be that it is madness. That’s not to suggest the prime minister should express such a view or in those terms. But a more considered response other than the vacuous and slippery one given was required considering the magnitude of what Trump was proposing.
Having nothing to say doesn’t cut the mustard.
The reiteration of Australia’s position on a two-state solution was insufficient for a number of reasons.
The PM would surely be aware that Trump’s announcement will not be without potential consequence for Australia.
Forget the obvious problems with international law, the rights of Palestinians or the abandonment of America’s long-held objection to colonialism. And never mind how it might conflict with Australia’s new position on an accelerated statehood for Palestine.
In Albanese’s defence, no-one on the Coalition side had anything more courageous or coherent to say in response either.
