Pocock says rejection of blanket ban on gambling ads a ‘betrayal’ of Peta Murphy’s legacy
Following on from our earlier post, independent senator David Pocock has accused the government of betraying the legacy of the late Labor MP Peta Murphy over its failure to support a ban on gambling ads.
In a post on social media, Pocock accused the government of appeasing the gambling industry.
There is support in the parliament to implement the Murphy Review recommendations in full – not some watered down policy to appease the gambling industry.
Find some courage & end this harm
What a total cop out & betrayal of the late Peta Murphy’s legacy.
There is support in the parliament to implement the Murphy Review recommendations in full – not some watered down policy to appease the gambling industry.
Find some courage & end this harmhttps://t.co/e6fGlOl1Oo pic.twitter.com/KFmV4dhcB7
— David Pocock (@DavidPocock) August 3, 2024
Key events
Daniel Hurst
Marles and Wong flying to US for annual defence talks
The defence minister, Richard Marles, and the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, are about to fly to the US for annual talks with their American counterparts.
The annual talks with Lloyd Austin and Antony Blinken are scheduled to happen in Maryland on Tuesday.
The trip was announced by the US embassy last week, but Marles and Wong have today issued their own statement about the visit. They described the US as “Australia’s closest ally and our principal security partner”.
Marles said the alliance “remains fundamental to our national security”. He said the two sides would work on “ways to deepen and broaden our alliance, including through the longstanding US Force Posture Initiatives in Australia”.
Wong said the visit was “an opportunity for action to take our alliance forward”.
She said Australia and the United States were “finding new areas for cooperation and collaboration that will not only boost our own resilience and prosperity but will also deliver for a peaceful Indo-Pacific”.
She said the two countries were “committed to building a peaceful, stable and prosperous region”.
Government opens public consultation on supports to be funded under NDIS
Minister for government services and the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Bill Shorten, has opened public consultation on what will and won’t be funded under the NDIS.
The government has developed a list of NDIS Supports based on “current guidance and practices”. It is intended this list will remain in place until the federal government and the states agree to replace it.
Shorten said this approach will provide clarity for participants under the scheme.
The purpose of defining NDIS Supports is to make it clearer for participants what they can and can’t use their NDIS funds to buy.
This will enable transition to more flexible budgets as recommended by the NDIS review.
We’ve listened to the participants and providers who have said there isn’t enough guidance out there to support them. This consultation is part of the broader reform of the NDIS, to deliver better outcomes for Australians with disability.
We want to get rid of the uncertainty and confusion so everyone is clear on what’s in and what’s out, and participants can get on with achieving the outcomes they want and lead the fulfilling life they deserve.
Shorten said nothing would change for participants or providers while consultation was under way, and all levels of government would closely consider feedback before finalising how to communicate the defined supports.
The public consultation period will be open until 18 August, with the proposed lists available from the DSS engage website.
Investigation into man’s death in central Queensland mine accident
An investigation is under way into the death of a worker at a coalmine in central Queensland.
The 48-year-old man died at the Byerwen Mine infrastructure site in Suttor, west of Mackay on Saturday morning.
Initial reports suggest the incident involved a pick and a carry crane, industry regulator Resources Safety and Health Queensland said.
For more on this story, read the Guardian’s reporting on this incident:
AFP seizes more than $15m in cash and property as part of Gold Coast money laundering investigation
The Australian federal police has seized $15.6m in assets following an investigation into a money laundering operation on the Gold Coast.
The AFP-led Criminal Asset Confiscation Taskforce (CACT) seized $12.96m worth of real estate, including waterfront properties and a high-rise unit, $1.95m in cash, $514,000 in cryptocurrency and $118,000 held in bank accounts.
The investigation commenced as a result of intelligence provided by Austrac relating to two Russian nationals who moved to Australia in 2015 and are alleged to have laundered funds into Australia. They are currently before the courts.
It will be alleged funds were used to purchase or rapidly repay mortgages for multiple Queensland properties, including waterfront properties in Hope Island, Broadbeach Waters and Runaway Bay, houses in Labrador, Alexandra Hills and Mount Gravatt, and a high-rise unit in a Milton complex.
Acting commander Amelia McDonald said the CACT worked with criminal investigators to identify and restrain potential proceeds of crime to deliver the maximum impact possible on the criminal environment.
People engaged in money laundering are motivated by greed and an intent to make illicit profits. We work tirelessly with our partners to disrupt their criminal activities and remove their ill-gotten wealth.
The AFP’s ability to target the means by which criminals launder their money and seize these profits sends a message to criminals – all your wealth is an illusion which will disappear when we knock on your door.
The assets will be handed over to the federal government to be sold by the Official Trustee in Bankruptcy. The money obtained from the sale of these assets will then be placed into a confiscated assets account, managed by the official trustee on behalf of the commonwealth.
It will then be distributed by the attorney-general for crime prevention measures, diversion programs and other law enforcement measures across Australia.
How the tragic case of Ruqia Haidari could change the way Australia deals with forced marriage
Five months before she was murdered by her new husband, Ruqia Haidari met the Australian federal police and told them she was being forced into the marriage by her mother.
But the 20-year-old did not want the police – or the support workers who were also in the meeting, or any of the other people she spoke to about the impending marriage – to take the matter further.
Nobody could know that 151 days later, and 3300 km away from her family’s regional Victorian home in Shepparton, Haidari would be killed by her husband.
That murder hung heavily over this week’s sentencing of Haidari’s mother, the first person to be convicted for the crime of forced marriage in Australia.
It was completely removed from the proceedings and yet intrinsically linked: would there have been a forced marriage prosecution if Haidari had not been killed, making redundant her wish for police to remain silent about what she had told them?
The question is not only relevant to Haidari’s case, but in considering why there have been so few prosecutions – when more than 500 referrals regarding forced marriage have been made to the AFP since 2018.
“We failed,” says Dr Laura Vidal, a lecturer at the University of Canberra and an expert in forced marriage.
We left her without support, without a safety net, and can only then retrospectively prosecute because she died.
For more on this story, read the full report by Guardian Australia’s Nino Bucci:
Pocock says rejection of blanket ban on gambling ads a ‘betrayal’ of Peta Murphy’s legacy
Following on from our earlier post, independent senator David Pocock has accused the government of betraying the legacy of the late Labor MP Peta Murphy over its failure to support a ban on gambling ads.
In a post on social media, Pocock accused the government of appeasing the gambling industry.
There is support in the parliament to implement the Murphy Review recommendations in full – not some watered down policy to appease the gambling industry.
Find some courage & end this harm
What a total cop out & betrayal of the late Peta Murphy’s legacy.
There is support in the parliament to implement the Murphy Review recommendations in full – not some watered down policy to appease the gambling industry.
Find some courage & end this harmhttps://t.co/e6fGlOl1Oo pic.twitter.com/KFmV4dhcB7
— David Pocock (@DavidPocock) August 3, 2024
Labor rejects blanket gambling ad ban proposal in favour of TV caps, digital restrictions
The Albanese government has refused to back a ban on gambling ads, allowing them to continue to run on TV, albeit with tightened restrictions.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Albanese government has instead chosen to cap the number of gambling ads at two an hour until 10pm, and ban gambling ads for an hour before and after live sport.
Gambling ads will, however, be banned on social media and other digital platforms.
The ban was proposed in an inquiry led by one of Labor’s own MPs, Peta Murphy, who campaigned internally for a ban all gambling ads across television, radio, newspapers and online within three years.
Murphy died in December.
Daniel Hurst
Shadow defence minister says plan to let Palestinians stay in Australia made for ‘political expediency’
The Coalition’s defence spokesperson, Andrew Hastie, has given the opposition’s initial response to the government’s confirmation that it is considering ways for Palestinians to stay longer rather than being forced to return to rubble in Gaza.
Hastie told Sky News the idea “looks quite reflexive from the government, it looks hurried”.
Hastie said the new minister for home affairs and immigration, Tony Burke, and some of his colleagues in south-west Sydney were “under immense pressure” over the government’s response to the war in Gaza:
He is under a lot of pressure, and he could have a pro-Gaza independent run against him. And so I think this is where this has come from. And I think it’s right for the Australian people to have transparency and accountability on this issue. And we want to see as much detail as possible. We don’t want to see hurried visas issued out of political expediency.
Burke said earlier that he would act in the national interest and that he would not compromise on security checks.
Tony Burke flags visa changes for Palestinians: ‘no country in the world would send people back to Gaza at the moment’
Daniel Hurst
The new minister for home affairs, Tony Burke, has confirmed he is looking at ways to allow Palestinians who fled to Australia on visitor visas to stay in the country longer, saying no country would send people back to Gaza right now.
In an interview with Sky News this morning, Burke said it was understandable that visitor visas were used in the midst of the immediate crisis, but these visas were now expiring:
Certainly no country in the world would send people back to Gaza at the moment, no country in the world would do that, and so we have to work through what happens as the visas that people are currently on expire.
Burke said the decision had not yet been made, so he wasn’t in a position to announce the details today. Pressed on whether he was considering safe haven visas or some form of permanent protection, he said:
When you consider what these individuals have gone through – you’ve got lots of people who have experienced serious trauma, they’ve suffered great loss of family and friends with the killings that have occurred over there, and they’re also in a situation where for many of them the homes where they used to live are now now rubble.
Asked by Sky News about security checks for visa applicants, Burke said he was committed to such checks and would not put any issue ahead of community safety.
For more on this issue, see this story by my colleague Sarah Basford Canales last week:
And that’s a wrap – but just to circle back to the discussion, as the Insiders panel is now noting, the prime minister was seeking to rely upon a very particular definition of Makaratta, owing to the perceived political constraints the government now finds itself under.
In the PM’s version, Makaratta refers to a process of ongoing engagement or “coming together”.
As has been noted, Makaratta is also used to describe a process or institutional setup to facilitate conflict resolution.
PM says renewal required after ‘considerable hurt’ of voice referendum
The PM has acknowledged that there “is no doubt there was considerable hurt” from the way campaigning around the voice referendum was conducted, and that Indigenous peoples will take time to heal from that.
Seeking to reframe his government’s approach toward the future, he says he is “optimistic”.
But what is important is that we walk together. And one of the things that is a theme of this is renewal, and is a theme of walking together, recognising that this isn’t just an issue, from my perspective, about Indigenous Australians. It is about closing the gap for them, but my view has always been that Australia, as a nation, will benefit from being more united, from being more reconciled with our history. And that that is important for all of us, but it’s also important for how Australia is seen in the region and the world.
The PM says his government will seek to work more with the private sector, name-checking Rio Tinto and Fortescue as examples, to provide better outcomes for Indigenous people, including employment, saying “this is part of that social contract that they have”.
By and large, what I find is the private sector has been very prepared to engage. And that goes not just for large businesses as well, but the opportunities that are there for small businesses to grow. One of the things that we want to do is to increase home ownership for First Nations people as well. And they’re the sort of programs that we’re working through.