Labor doesn’t have ‘political will’ to pursue makarrata, Greens senator says
Wrapping up the interview, Dorinda Cox is asked about comments made by the new minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, that a makarrata commission – or truth-telling inquiry – would be hard to pursue without bipartisan support.
Cox says she disagrees with McCarthy on this:
I think that the government could absolutely pursue makarrata if there was political will to do that. What I don’t hear from them is the political will.
They have a majority of numbers in the house, and they have a crossbench who are one of the most progressive crossbenches – and that includes us – and the numbers in the Senate.
So I’m not buying any of that from the minister. If their timetable dictates that they don’t want to pursue makarrata, they should just be honest about that and tell the Australian people that they’re not going to do that.
Key events
NZ PM Luxon arrives at parliament house
The ABC is broadcasting live footage of New Zealand prime minister Chris Luxon arriving at parliament house in Canberra, alongside the prime minister Anthony Albanese.
As we flagged earlier, Luxon is in Canberra today for the annual Australia New Zealand leaders meeting.
Jonathan Barrett
NAB warns of ‘challenging’ economy as arrears jump
National Australia Bank chief executive Andrew Irvine has warned of a “challenging” economic environment that is leading to increasing numbers of customers falling behind on mortgage repayments.
In a quarterly update released today, Irvine said:
While most customers are proving resilient, not unexpectedly we have seen asset quality deteriorate further in [the quarter].
He said the “economic environment, including persistent inflationary pressures, is challenging for our customers”.
NAB booked an impairment charge of $118m due to the deteriorating asset quality, which refers to potential losses linked to assets like loans. The bank referred to higher mortgage arrears, but does not disclose the quantity in quarterly trading updates.
Data from rival Commonwealth Bank shows that mortgage holders are spending well over 20% of their pre-tax income on their loans, representing one of the highest levels on record.
NAB reported cash earnings of $1.75bn for the quarter, which is flat on the previous three-month period.
Dutton doubles down on criticism of Zali Steggall
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, was on the Today Show earlier and questioned on the Coalition’s push for a ban on Palestinian visas. He was asked: “You’ve been accused of having no heart. Has anything changed overnight?”
Dutton responded: “I just think if you’ve got no substance to your argument, you throw out those sort of lines.”
In parliament yesterday, Steggall accused the Coalition of whipping up fear and told Dutton to “stop being racist” in the chamber before withdrawing the comment. This morning Dutton echoed sentiments from yesterday, accusing her of “extreme views”, and said:
I mean the nonsense and the rhetoric, you’ve heard from the hard left and zealots like Zali Steggall, who are just hard Greens, it’s just a nonsense.
The host noted that 7,000 visas had been rejected – so isn’t this a sign the system is working? Dutton claimed:
They’ve brought people in without doing interviews from a warzone that’s controlled by Hamas … [On the ground] there are between 40% and 70% of people [that] have … sympathy for this listed terrorist organisation.
As Amy Remeikis noted in yesterday’s blog, 44% of voters in Gaza voted for Hamas in 2006 and there has not been an election since.
Sophie Wang remembered as ‘thoughtful, bright girl’
The principal of Emmanuel College, Dan Brown, has been speaking to the media this morning after one of the school’s students, 10-year-old Sophie Wang, was found dead in a Gold Coast unit on Tuesday.
Wang’s mother Yingying Xu, 46, has been arrested and charged with her murder.
Brown said that Wang would be remembered as an “intelligent, thoughtful, bright girl that loved her academics, loved reading [and] loved to sing.”
She was caring and compassionate and was a really great friend. Those memories will live on. At this particular point in time, the school would like to express our sincere condolences to the family and those loved ones in the family and her close friends.
Asked if there are plans to memorialise Wang, Brown said the immediate attention is on providing support to students and staff and those conversations would occur in due course.
On a personal level, Brown said he has been feeling “devastation” amid the news.
As a principal of a school, there’s probably nothing harder that you deal with in the loss of a student but particularly around the tragic circumstances of this particular loss. I am human too. It hits me hard as well …
Forrest on job cuts: ‘clearly going to be redundancies when you make something more efficient’
Andrew Forrest was asked about the recent announcement that Fortescue would slash 700 jobs from its global operations as part of a major restructure, which you can read more on below:
He said there is “clearly going to be redundancies when you make something more efficient.”
Don’t confuse that with the fact that we’re growing our company rapidly and we are growing it into green energy, growing it into green metal … We cannot keep going down the oil and gas path just because we know it, because we’re too lazy to do anything else!
Forrest later added he would “like to be employing 7,000 or 70,000” people but can’t do that amid the “gyrations” in energy policy and the current nuclear debate.
People [are] arguing over where ought to go when it’s clear we should go to the cheapest form of energy the world has ever had, and that’s green energy.
Fortescue begins work on Pilbara ‘green metal’ iron ore project
Mining magnate Andrew Forrest spoke to ABC News Breakfast just earlier, as his Fortescue group is set to begin work on a green iron metal project in the Pilbara today – which aims to use renewable energy and green hydrogen reduction technology.
He spoke from Christmas Creek in WA, standing in front of the “world’s first green hydrogen truck”, and said:
If we can capture making green metal here with trucks which produce absolutely no carbon emissions from fuel we make right here in Australia, we capture the sun and the wind which is available in enormous quantities, we combine it with the rock which we have in enormous quantities here in Australia called iron ore and we produce green metal – and the world needs green metal.
Almost 10% of the carbon emissions which are destroying our planet comes from the making of that metal. Now, if we can switch it to entirely green, if Australia can lead that, then we have one of the biggest industries, if not the biggest industry Australia has ever had in front of us. If we can get our policy settings right we should, as a nation, go for this.
Australia and UK export controls comparable, US says, in boost for Aukus
The US State Department has told Congress that Australia, Britain and the United States now have comparable export-control regimes, a significant step needed to facilitate technology sharing and allow Aukus to move ahead.
As Reuters reports, the sharing of closely guarded technology – which is governed by strict US international trafficking in arms regulations (Itar) – has been a hurdle for cooperation between the nations.
The 2024 US National Defense Authorization Act required President Joe Biden to determine whether Australia and Britain had export control regimes “comparable to the United States” and thereby qualify for Itar exemptions. The State Department said:
Today, the Department of State submitted to the Congress a determination that Australia and UK export control systems are comparable to those of the United States and have implemented a reciprocal export exemption for U.S. entities.
It said it would publish an interim final rule on Friday to amend Itar and implement export licensing exemptions for Australia and Britain effective from 1 September.
The final rule will include a list of sensitive technologies excluded from Itar exemptions and analysts say this will probably mean that significant bureaucratic hurdles still need to be overcome to realise the Aukus projects.
You can read more on Australia’s side of the new treaty arrangements below, from Daniel Hurst:
Raygun receiving support amid ‘pile-on’, Australian Olympic Committee chief says
The Australian Olympics Committee is supporting breakdancer Rachael Gunn – known more commonly as Raygun – who said the backlash she has received since competing at the Paris Olympics has been “devastating”.
Raygun released a video on Instagram late last night, making some of her first comments since going viral. AOC chief executive Matt Carroll was on ABC News Breakfast earlier and said an online petition against Raygun had been taken down:
Rachel is an athlete, an Olympian. She was legitimately selected to the Australian Olympic team with the full support of her sport in a process that was covered by the international world dance federation, by the local dance sport in Australia and all legitimately done. This pile-on and petition was a fabrication of mistruths, made up …
Most people don’t understand the judging process of breaking. I have to admit I am not across it either but, as Rachel said this morning in her post, go to Olympics.com and you can see how the system works and the way she approached it was the way you do this particular sport.
Carroll said Raygun would be taking some time off and, when she returned to Australia, would be supported by the AOC.
Indigenous affairs would ‘no longer exist in this country’ under Dutton, Cox says
Dorinda Cox has argued that if opposition leader Peter Dutton were put in charge, “Indigenous affairs will no longer exist in this country” – amid the conversation surrounding whether bipartisan support for makarrata can be achieved. She told ABC RN:
I think that the Coalition continue to put forward a position that we are just the same as everyone else, which is in fact not true. Indigenous people in this country are the first peoples, and it was why the constitutional recognition has been many, many decades in the making …
We, as the first Australians, want to be recognised and should be recognised. But under Peter Dutton and his leadership, he’s made it quite clear, and that’s not a new thing. Remember, this is a man who walked out of the 2008 apology to First Nations people in this country, so he’s got a track record, and he’s not willing to come to the table to have a conversation about Indigenous affairs, and that’s the reality of the situation.
Cox said the government needed to “wisen up” and find other ways to progress the Indigenous affairs portfolio “because there’s an expectation” after their 2022 election promise to implement the Uluru statement from the heart in full:
So they’re breaking their election promise by now crab crawling or walking back, watering down the definition of makarrata. They should just own that, breaking a promise, instead of using the issue of bipartisanship as a weak excuse.
Labor doesn’t have ‘political will’ to pursue makarrata, Greens senator says
Wrapping up the interview, Dorinda Cox is asked about comments made by the new minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, that a makarrata commission – or truth-telling inquiry – would be hard to pursue without bipartisan support.
Cox says she disagrees with McCarthy on this:
I think that the government could absolutely pursue makarrata if there was political will to do that. What I don’t hear from them is the political will.
They have a majority of numbers in the house, and they have a crossbench who are one of the most progressive crossbenches – and that includes us – and the numbers in the Senate.
So I’m not buying any of that from the minister. If their timetable dictates that they don’t want to pursue makarrata, they should just be honest about that and tell the Australian people that they’re not going to do that.