Australia news LIVE: Nationals split from Liberals; Howard lashes Coalition collapse as ‘stupid move’

Gender pay gaps at Australia’s biggest public sector employers have been revealed for the first time, showing lower gaps compared to the private sector.

However, men account for just 11 per cent of all primary carer leave taken and 49 per cent of employers still have a gender pay gap in favour of men.

Well-known employers such as Australia Post, the Australian Tax Office, Reserve Bank, CSIRO and dozens of federal government departments have had their pay gaps published.

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency was able to publish the data after law changes in 2023, with private sector gaps published earlier in 2025.

Half of Commonwealth public sector employers have a median total remuneration gender pay gap lower than 4.8 per cent, compared to 8.9 per cent in the private sector.

Nearly half have a median total remuneration gender pay gap in the target range of within +/-5 per cent, compared to 31 per cent in the private sector.

More than half of employers improved their median total remuneration gender pay gap in the past 12 months.

The results showed how progress could be achieved when employers used long-term and deliberate actions that addressed gender equality, agency chief executive Mary Wooldridge said.

“Pleasingly we have also seen large rises in the number of employers conducting a gender pay gap analysis, acting on the results and consulting with employees to understand their experience at work,” she said.

AAP

Staying with Watt, and the new environment minister says a national environmental protection agency (EPA) is still firmly on the cards but acknowledges it could cost jobs.

Appearing on ABC Radio Perth, Watt refused to say whether a federal EPA would have veto power and whether he would ultimately have the final say on environmental approval for projects.

“There’s always going to be a degree of discretion in a system where decisions are made by a minister or a departmental representative … but as I say, it’s a little too early for me to say it’s going to be a very discretionary model or a really prescriptive model,” he said.

Watt is meeting with various industry groups, environmental organisations and First Nations groups this week in Western Australia.

He said he aimed to implement new laws with the widest possible support but acknowledged the new environmental laws could cost jobs.

“If we don’t get the laws right, that is a risk,” Watt said.

“The challenge is to get the laws right in a way that they do protect our environment. And let’s not forget … there are so many jobs and industries that rely on a healthy environment. I just don’t think we need to have one or the other.”

Newly installed Environment Minister Murray Watt says the information he needs to make a final ruling on the future of Woodside’s North West Shelf project in Western Australia has been finalised.

“I believe I do [have all the information to make the decision],” Watt said on ABC Radio Perth.

“My department has now finalised a brief to me with a recommendation that I’ll be going through in the next few days.”

Watt has been meeting with several ministers in WA ahead of a decision due before May 31 on whether to grant an extension to Woodside’s North West Shelf gas project.

“I’m a bit limited in terms of what I can say about it because I am in the middle of a decision-making process, and whatever I say on radio might be the basis of a legal appeal,” he said.

“One thing I can guarantee you is that whatever decision I make, there’ll be lots of people unhappy on either side of the debate, but that’s just the nature of the job.”

Nationals leader David Littleproud has revealed he and Liberal leader Sussan Ley shared a hug after his party’s decision to not re-enter a Coalition agreement.

“We had a great hug at the end of it, when I went around and told her the formal notification of our position,” Littleproud told ABC Radio National.

“I’m committed to … helping Sussan get her party up and going. But I’m not going to do that at the expense of the people we represent.”

Nationals leader David Littleproud was asked on ABC radio earlier this morning about the value of his party’s policies if they were not in government to implement them.

“Yes, politics is the brutal game of arithmetic, but no one’s going to vote for you if you don’t stand for something,” he told Radio National.

“It’s about standing for those principles, for those people that sent us here. To not think about our own personal gain or position, but to say there is a line that can’t be crossed.

“We want to be constructive, and we will be constructive, but there are principles that we can’t walk past.”

Littleproud said he believes more people would vote for the Nationals if the party stood by their policies and values rather than rollover for political expedience.

“If we do that, then that brutal game of arithmetic comes our way, and we can join with the Coalition to deliver these things,” he said.

Nationals deputy leader Kevin Hogan says party members were not unanimous when the Coalition split was decided.

“It wasn’t unanimous, but it was quite conclusive,” Hogan told Sky News this morning.

“I didn’t make this decision.”

Hogan said the decision was not one made by Nationals leader David Littleproud or Nationals senate leader Bridget McKenzie, rather the party room.

In an interview earlier today on ABC Radio National Breakfast, Littleproud was asked how many party members disagreed with the decision to split.

“You’ll never know that. In the National party room, it’s sacrosanct, and I’ll respect the privacy of that room,” he said.

Littleproud said it had been a decision “of the collective”.

“We go around the room, and we get a collective idea about where we all sit,” he said. “It was a tough decision to make, one we didn’t take lightly, and one that’s not made in anger or vengeance. It’s one that’s predicated on principle.”

Looking overseas now, and US President Donald Trump has announced the concept he wants for his future Golden Dome missile defence program, a $US175 billion ($272 billion) system that would put the first American weapons in space.

Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump said he expected the system would be “fully operational before the end of my term,” which ends in 2029, and have the capability of intercepting missiles “even if they are launched from space”.

It’s more likely that the complex system may have some initial capability by that point, a US official familiar with the program said.

Golden Dome is envisioned to include ground- and space-based capabilities to detect and destroy missiles before a launch, intercept them in their earliest stage of flight, stop them mid-course in the air, or halt them as they descend toward a target.

For the last several months, Pentagon planners have been developing options that include space-based interceptors. The Congressional Budget Office estimated this month that just the space-based components of the Golden Dome could cost as much as $US542 billion ($844 billion) over the next 20 years.

The Pentagon has warned for years that the newest missiles developed by China and Russia are so advanced that updated countermeasures are necessary. Golden Dome’s added satellites and interceptors — where the bulk of the program’s cost is — would be focused on stopping them.

There is no money for the project yet, and Golden Dome overall is “still in the conceptual stage,” Air Force secretary Troy Meink told senators during a hearing his week.

AP

The mastermind behind Labor’s decisive election victory will lay out how the party secured one of the biggest wins in history.

In an address to the National Press Club later today, Labor’s national secretary and campaign director Paul Erickson will say the government’s economic narrative and ability to adapt was crucial to its expanded majority.

Labor boosted its ranks to have at least 93 seats in the next parliament, one of its largest majorities in history, with Erickson credited as the architect behind the result.

“The conventional wisdom undervalued Labor’s capacity to use our record as the foundation for our second term policy offer,” he will say in the speech.

“Over three years, Labor’s record and Peter Dutton’s opposition built up an advantage for Labor as the best party to provide cost-of-living relief.”

The speech as comes as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese arrived back in Canberra after a successful overseas trip to Indonesia, Vatican City and Singapore, where he met with the Pope and other world leaders including Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky.

AAP