Australia news live: Bragg agrees Coalition ‘running out of people to offend’; 7 October anniversary ‘not a day for demonstrations’, Marles says

Palestine Action Group to call for supreme court to make a finding of genocide

The Palestine Action Group will this morning face court in their fight against the New South Wales police over a proposed plan to march on the Sydney Opera House this Sunday.

The group also plans to call during the hearing on the NSW supreme court “to make a formal finding that Israel’s onslaught in Gaza amounts to genocide”.

It comes after Justice Desmond Fagan, when hearing the matter for directions on Friday, said he thought the crowd could exceed 100,000 because of “what appears to be the sentiment in the community, and that has developed over two years of sort of real time broadcasting of genocide of too many people.” PAG spokesperson, Amal Naser, said:

We welcome Justice Fagan’s willingness to call out genocide, reflecting the undeniable reality on the ground.

We refuse to allow police, politicians, or state institutions to erase this truth. Our movement stands on the side of justice and international law. Our lawyers will argue for the supreme court to recognise both: Our right to protest under domestic and international law. That Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.

Last Wednesday, the group announced its plan to diverge from the normal route of its near weekly rallies over the past two years, and march from Hyde Park to the Sydney Opera House on 12 October to mark two years since 7 October.

But on Friday the NSW police announced it would knock back the group’s application to march to the Opera House, citing safety concerns such as crowd crush over limited exit points from the forecourt.

Two Jewish groups are also attempting to challenge in court the protest and its location. It’s the first time the the Executive Council of Jewry and the Jewish Board of Deputies have sought to challenge a pro-Palestine protest.

The court is expected to decide this morning if their challenge will be allowed to be heard or not.

Adding a bit of context to the last post, Anthony Albanese had said before that 8 October 2023 protest that it should not go ahead.

Both he and foreign minister Penny Wong condemned footage appearing to show attenders at the rally chanting anti-Jewish sentiments (a claim police later walked back after independent analysis).

At the time, Albanese said images from the rally were “horrific”, and there were, “slogans which are antisemitic and just appalling, with no place”.

Related: Australia’s leaders condemn ‘abhorrent’ scenes after anti-Jewish chants filmed at Sydney rally

Tim Wilson claims Albanese lost ‘moral authority’ by not ‘standing up’ against pro-Palestine protests

Liberal MP Tim Wilson claims Hamas has “won a propaganda war every step of the way” in response to graffiti found this morning in Melbourne which states “glory to Hamas”.

Wilson told Sky News there are some who still are trying to “sow division”.

There [are] some sections, sadly, of the Australian community who want to sow division, to turn hatred towards, particularly the Jewish community, but to use as a basis to drive broader division within society and to inflame extremism.

Wilson also said he hopes planned protests at the Sydney Opera House over the weekend will not go ahead, and accused the prime minister of having lost “moral authority” for not “standing up” to previous protests.

[Albanese] lost his moral authority when he didn’t stand up against the protests on 8 October 2023 on the steps of the Sydney Opera House …

I hope it doesn’t go ahead, because think about the number of lives that have been lost. Think about the families have been separated. Think about the people who have had their children burned alive by Hamas.

It’s coming up to 9am which means Senate estimates is about to begin.

We have eyes on all the committees, so we’ll bring you the drama as it happens.

Australia will have ‘backside out of its pants’ if productivity growth remains low, Bragg says

The budget will face a $58bn black hole to the year 2028-29 if productivity growth remains low at just 0.5%, says Andrew Bragg, who commissioned the work by the parliamentary budget office.

He says the “productivity failure now means Australia has its backside out of its pants.”

The 2025-26 budget has a longer-term forecast that underlying productivity is assumed to grow at 1.2% per year. While the Reserve Bank has a medium term assumption that productivity growth will return to 0.7% by the end of the forecast period.

Bragg says:

Chalmers is padding his budget with fantasy forecasts. A more realistic 0.5% productivity rate – halfway between the historic average and Labor’s guesswork – shows the budget is in far worse shape.

On Sky News the assistant treasurer, Dan Mulino, was asked about the figures this morning and says Australia has “come off the worst decade in 60 years” when it comes to productivity growth, and backed the 1.2% Treasury forecast.

That’s a Treasury assumption which is based upon long-term productivity averages across the economy and it’s pretty standard practice for Treasury to use assumptions like that in budget papers …

The key thing for me is that the government is now prioritising lifting productivity rates from where we inherited them through a range of policies right across the economy. And that’s what we need to be doing and that’s the focus of our economic policy at the moment.

PNG alliance a ‘very big deal’, Albanese says

Anthony Albanese has made a quick TV appearance to spruik the PNG alliance signed yesterday, calling it a “very big deal”.

What are some of the elements of the agreement?

Albanese tells the Today show it means Australian soldiers will be “increasingly participating in PNG and vice versa”, along with the training of PNG personnel by the Australian defence force.

He’s asked whether the government has “lost” Vanuatu and Solomon Islands (as there was supposed to be a separate agreement signed with Vanuatu last month), but Albanese says “not at all”.

We’re working closely with both of those countries. Vanuatu, we have an agreement that we’re working through, hoping to finalise that. But the PNG deal of course is by far our largest neighbour. It’s by far the largest neighbour in the Pacific. PNG has a population equivalent of every other one of the Pacific island nations. So it is a very significant deal.

Watt says he has made three trips to WA as part of environment law consultation

Western Australia is one of the key players the federal government needs to win over to get the EPBC reforms across the line.

Why? They’ve got a strong mining industry and the premier, Roger Cook, made it clear that he wasn’t a fan of the legislation the commonwealth had put forward during the last term of parliament.

Murray Watt says he’s made three trips to WA since becoming the environment minister, and met with the premier, the mining industry and conservation groups across the state.

I’ve made very clear that dealing with the Western Australian government, along with every other state government, is a priority here, even when we pass these laws. I’m confident that we will.

Of course, these laws had a lot of interest in WA, but I’ve similarly met with people and pretty much every state and territory environment minister around the country.

Environment law reform negotiations ‘down to detail’, Watt says

The government still “aims” to get its environment laws passed this year, says environment minister Murray Watt, who has publicly said reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act will be introduced “this side of Christmas”.

Watt is on ABC RN Breakfast this morning and says he’s been consulting around the clock since he became minister in mid-May.

Time is ticking though, there are only three more weeks left in the year where both houses are sitting.

Everyone can agree that we need laws that deliver stronger environmental protections, quicker approval processes, and more transparency. And I guess what we’re down to now is detail, making sure that we can deliver a bill to the parliament that has very widespread support.

I’ve now met a couple of times with both the shadow environment minister, Angie Bell, and with the Greens environment spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young. All of those meetings have been, I think, quite positive and constructive. You know, I wouldn’t want to say that we’re about to do a deal with anyone. There’s obviously more work to be done.

If you feel like we’ve been talking about this issue forever, well … Graeme Samuel first wrote his report that the EPBC Act needed serious amending almost five years ago, and the government almost passed legislation in its last term of government, before spiking it at the 11th hour.

Marles says government engaging with Israel over detained flotilla activists

Richard Marles says the government is engaging with Israeli authorities and providing consular assistance to the Australians on the Gaza flotilla who have been detained.

The activists have told Australian officials they have faced “degrading and humiliating” treatment.

Related: Australian Gaza flotilla activists detained by Israel complain of ‘degrading and humiliating’ treatment

Marles says Australian officials are providing the “full suite of consular assistance”.

We’re obviously providing consular assistance to those who have been involved in this and we will continue to do that. I’m not about to go into it in more detail than that.

Marles says 7 October a ‘day of remembrance and commemoration’

The deputy PM, Richard Marles, says 7 October is not a day for demonstration, but a solemn day for the Jewish community.

On whether the government views a planned demonstration at the Sydney Opera House this weekend as “appropriate”, Marles tells ABC News Breakfast it’s a matter for the courts.

Today is not a day for demonstrations. Today is a day for remembrance and commemoration. I mean, obviously, this is a very difficult day for the Jewish community in Australia and it is a very solemn day.

Greens call for a full refund from Deloitte report that used AI

Greens senator Barbara Pocock, who helped lead the charge in a Senate inquiry looking at the integrity of consultancy firms, is pretty livid this morning over Deloitte’s offer of a partial refund for its report written for the department of employment and workplace relations.

You can read the backstory here:

Related: Deloitte to pay money back to Albanese government after using AI in $440,000 report

On ABC RN Breakfast a little earlier, Pocock said Australians will be “choking on their breakfast” hearing about a big -our consultancy firm using AI in a report that had several errors.

Our parliament has given an enormous amount of resources to tracking down poor value for money, and the government committed itself to making sure that it didn’t contract out core work of this type.

Here it has, it’s contracted out core work, and once again, we see proof in the pudding of poor quality work, poor value for money, and the kinds of things that Australians should not be putting up with, and our government should have much higher standards around.

She also takes a stab at Deloitte for quietly re-releasing the work on a Friday, with no apology and “no public accountability”.

‘There is nothing worse than politicians focusing on themselves’: Cash

The opposition is trying to stop talking about itself following the dramatic resignation of Andrew Hastie from the frontbench on Friday.

Over on the Today show, senior shadow minister Michaelia Cash said she has “one job”, which is to hold the government to account (and not talk about the internal politics of the Liberal party).

There is nothing worse than politicians focusing on themselves. The Australian people, they actually hate that … the Australian people, they don’t like it when we focus on ourselves.

Cash is on a panel with Labor minister Amanda Rishworth, who describes the turmoil as “a bit Days of our Lives”. But she does agree that “people don’t like parties that are focused on themselves”.

Labor to introduce triple zero ‘custodian’ legislation to parliament this week

Three major telco bosses will be hauled into parliament today for a chat with the communications minister, Anika Wells, following two outages of the Optus mobile network.

The government will also be introducing legislation to enshrine the “triple zero custodian” into law, which provides oversight over the whole triple zero system.

Marles told Sky News a bit earlier that the government was acting on the recommendations of a March 2024 report it had commissioned after a previous Optus network outage two years ago.

We expect the obligations that are given by the telecommunications companies in putting in place the triple zero service that those obligations are met, and that is obviously what we have been talking with Optus about when this has previously been looked at after the previous outage a couple of years ago.

Marles says Vanuatu defence agreement will be signed in ‘not too distant future’

As mentioned, deputy PM and defence minister Richard Marles has been tapped on the shoulder to do the morning media, lauding the “historic” agreement with PNG.

Marles tells Sky News the alliance is “natural” in making Australia the security partner of choice for PNG. When pressed on whether the deal is about countering China, Marles emphasises that the deal is about Australia and PNG.

Albanese was anticipated to sign the alliance agreement during a recent trip to PNG, and had also been expected to sign a separate defence agreement with Vanuatu. On the latter, Marles says he won’t speculate when, but is confident that it will happen.

It doesn’t surprise me that it would take some time in order to do that, but I’m confident in the not too distant future, you will see us being able to sign the agreement that we are planning.

Bill to enable listing of state entities as terror organisations to enter parliament

Foreign state entities, such as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), could soon be listed as terror groups in Australia as the federal government looks to pass a bill tweaking counter-terrorism laws.

The bill, which will first be scrutinised by parliament’s security and intelligence committee, will amend laws to allow foreign state entities to be listed as a terror organisation for engaging directly, or indirectly, on acts on domestic soil.

In August, the Albanese government announced it would expel Tehran’s ambassador to Canberra after “credible intelligence” from the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (Asio) that Iran was behind the attacks against the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne and Lewis’s Continental Kitchen in Bondi in Sydney.

Asio’s head, Mike Burgess, said the attacks had been ordered by the IRGC working through a series of paid intermediaries acting in Australia.

The attorney-general, Michelle Rowland, said the changes will “make it more difficult, more risky, and more costly for malicious foreign actors to seek to cause Australia and our community harm”.

Read more:

Related: What is Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps?

Indonesia ‘will not be offended’ by Australia-PNG treaty, Marape says

Ferguson asked James Marape specifically if it was possible that PNG could make a decision not to be involved in a conflict Australia was engaged in with China.

Marape said:

There’s a high possibility, when it even happens, PNG has a sovereignty in itself. This treaty was constructed within the fullest ambit of respecting sovereignties, in making their own calls.

Likewise Australia, if PNG was engaged in a conflict, we would not expect Australia to drop everything else and run to us. The treaty has provisions where there’ll be consultations that will be engaged. There’s a finality of making calls that rests with respect to defence force commanders.

Ferguson asked Marape on the other side of the equation – is Australia committing to assisting Papua New Guinea in the event of cross-border raids between West Papua and Papua New Guinea?

Marape said “not so much – we have a healthy dialogue with Indonesia.”

He said PNG did not discuss the treaty with Indonesia before he signed. “It’s a matter between PNG and Australia.”

He said Indonesia and other nations will be informed on the finer details of the treaty: “I’m 100% certain Indonesia will not be offended. They clearly understand where our need is. It is also in our shared interest – Indonesia and PNG have 800 kilometres of land borders.”

PNG prime minister dismisses ‘alarmist approach’ to China relations

Marape commended Chinese officials for giving Papua New Guinea “full respect to our sovereign interests” in the process of the treaty. When asked, he said Chinese officials did not make any direct or indirect threats as to the consequences if he signed this treaty with Australia.

ABC 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson asked: “This treaty is different because it commits you to act in the face of a common danger. That’s clearly in Australia’s interest, because PNG provides a useful geographic location as well as all the other benefits. But what does PNG get from Australia’s interests vis-a-vis a heavily militarising China?”

Marape said PNG stands to benefit in its capacity to build their own defence force but emphasised:

The construct of this treaty is a construct in peacetime for peace. This is not a construct to create war. It’s rather a construct to establish peace …

I don’t necessarily see China as [an] enemy. China is a good relationship nation, even with Australia. We, PNG, we trade with China. We do business with China, and so there’s no need for an alarmist approach in this conversation.