source : the age
Hello and welcome to our national news live blog for Tuesday, June 2. Here’s what is making headlines today.
- Reserve Bank officials judged that Labor’s first-term housing agenda did little to improve supply and possibly raised prices, according to internal notes from the bank’s policy experts.
- Opposition frontbencher Andrew Hastie said yesterday Australia was getting the short end of the stick in a downgraded version of the AUKUS deal, and told the ABC the US does not take Australia seriously because “our defence policy lacks seriousness”. A public inquiry into AUKUS is set to kick off today in federal parliament.
- Health Minister Mark Butler says Australia is not considering any travel restrictions for visitors from the African nations at the centre of the Ebola outbreak, and will not be quarantining people on arrival.
- Donald Trump said Israel was halting planned attacks on the Lebanese capital Beirut, which were threatening to derail the ceasefire between the US and Iran, after he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The US president also claimed Hezbollah had agreed to a total ceasefire and insisted talks with Iran were continuing “at a rapid pace” – despite reports from Iran’s state-affiliated media that suggested Tehran was suspending negotiations.
- New polling places One Nation as the most popular party in Australia. In the poll, published by The Australian Financial Review on Sunday, One Nation received primary support of 31 per cent, above Labor at 28 and the Coalition at 20. The polls bolstered the confidence of party leader Pauline Hanson, who said she believed she could lead the country.
The treasurer has responded to judgement from the Reserve Bank of Australia that found Labor’s first-term housing agenda did little to improve supply and possibly raised prices, as first reported by this masthead.
“We’ve taken additional substantial steps since then. In our first term, we’re playing catch up on housing, because our predecessors had neglected housing for the best part of a decade,” Jim Chalmers told journalists in Canberra.
“We’ve got this primary focus on supply. You can’t build 1.2 million homes overnight, it takes time. But we’re investing now $47 billion in housing, and we’re making the tax system and the housing market fairer for first home buyers,” the Treasurer said.
“So, I’ve seen those stories … But we have taken very substantial additional steps since then.”
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has continued to defend the government’s budget, almost a month after it was handed down, as he said critics of the package were spreading misinformation to fight against contentious changes to the capital gains tax discount and negative gearing.
“I’m confident that we’ve made the right decisions for the right reasons … there will always be, accompanying major economic reform or tax reform, there will always be scare campaigns full of lies,” Chalmers told Nine’s Today this morning.
“Our tax changes are all about making it easier for people to buy their first home. They’re all about cutting income taxes again and again for working people, and that will, when you’re trying to make these sorts of changes, there will always be the usual scare campaigns,” he said.
“Of course, there are people who would prefer the current arrangements stay in place exactly as they are, but the current arrangements are locking too many people, and especially too many young Australians out of housing, and that’s why we’re acting decisively to change them.”
Sticking with Farley on ABC radio this morning, the One Nation MP would not comment on party leader Pauline Hanson’s patchy Senate attendance record.
The Australian reported yesterday that the senator had been absent from 88 per cent of Senate estimate hearing days over the past decade, according to a parliamentary library analysis.
Asked whether Hanson should be attending more often, Farley said, “I’m not exactly sure if, besides reading the press on the weekend, Pauline’s attendance record and understanding it, but it’s up to Pauline to see where she’s more effective, and I’ll leave that to [her].”
Farley committed to attending sessions of parliament “as much as [he] can”.
Newly elected One Nation MP David Farley has responded to polling this week showing his party surging in popularity, and said it was indicative of “a powerful amount of discontent across Australia at the moment”.
New polling places One Nation as the most popular party in Australia. In the poll, published by The Australian Financial Review, One Nation received primary support of 31 per cent, above Labor at 28 and the Coalition at 20.
Farley was elected to the seat of Farrer during a byelection last month. His election marks the first seat the party has ever held in the House of Representatives.
“It’s quite humbling to be the first One Nation member to enter into the lower house … It’s also quite exciting that we’ve been able to achieve this,” he told ABC Radio National this morning.
“What we learnt in Farrer was, first of all, the art of listening to actually understand what’s going on within your electorate,” he said.
The Trump administration said it would comply with a court ruling temporarily blocking a nearly $US1.8 billion ($2.5 billion) fund meant to compensate allies of US President Donald Trump.
It has effectively agreed to pause the plan for at least two weeks after setbacks in the courts and a fierce backlash from Republicans who objected to potential payouts to participants in the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol.
The announcement from the Justice Department came in response to a Friday court ruling by a federal judge in Virginia who ordered plans for the fund halted pending additional arguments later this month. The department said in a statement that it “disagrees strongly” with the ruling but would abide by it.
The Trump administration had defended the $US1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponisation Fund,” established to resolve Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns, as an appropriate corrective measure to make up for what officials insist was weaponised law enforcement during the Biden administration.
Though some Trump supporters, including participants in the Capitol riot, celebrated the announcement of the fund, the reaction among Republicans in Congress has been decidedly more hostile.
AP
Reserve Bank officials judged that Labor’s first-term housing agenda did little to improve supply and possibly raised prices, directly linking migration to affordability as Labor battles to prove the budget will increase the availability of homes.
Internal notes from the bank, which it initially sought to keep secret, described Labor’s first three years of housing policies as “relatively modest”. The documents obtained under freedom of information laws were prepared for a meeting of RBA board members in May last year, the same month as the federal election.
The bank documents show its policy experts were critical of policies such as Labor’s Help to Buy share equity initiative and an expansion of a scheme allowing people to buy a house with a 5 per cent deposit.
“In recent years, many policies that subsidise [first home buyers] – are just demand side measures, pull fwd purchases; many of the view this just translates into higher prices,” they wrote. “Being characterised as a demand side measures to bridge the gap until supply is online.”
Treasurer Jim Chalmers moved yesterday to counter doubts about whether scrapping investor concessions would boost supply, releasing an estimate suggesting that $25 billion that would have been spent on investments may be diverted to new houses, which can still be negatively geared.
Hello and welcome to our national news live blog for Tuesday, June 2. Here’s what is making headlines today.
- Reserve Bank officials judged that Labor’s first-term housing agenda did little to improve supply and possibly raised prices, according to internal notes from the bank’s policy experts.
- Opposition frontbencher Andrew Hastie said yesterday Australia was getting the short end of the stick in a downgraded version of the AUKUS deal, and told the ABC the US does not take Australia seriously because “our defence policy lacks seriousness”. A public inquiry into AUKUS is set to kick off today in federal parliament.
- Health Minister Mark Butler says Australia is not considering any travel restrictions for visitors from the African nations at the centre of the Ebola outbreak, and will not be quarantining people on arrival.
- Donald Trump said Israel was halting planned attacks on the Lebanese capital Beirut, which were threatening to derail the ceasefire between the US and Iran, after he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The US president also claimed Hezbollah had agreed to a total ceasefire and insisted talks with Iran were continuing “at a rapid pace” – despite reports from Iran’s state-affiliated media that suggested Tehran was suspending negotiations.
- New polling places One Nation as the most popular party in Australia. In the poll, published by The Australian Financial Review on Sunday, One Nation received primary support of 31 per cent, above Labor at 28 and the Coalition at 20. The polls bolstered the confidence of party leader Pauline Hanson, who said she believed she could lead the country.
