source : the age
Welcome to our rolling live coverage of all the latest news and developments around Australia and the world this Monday, September 14.
Here is what’s making news today.
- Voters’ trust in Anthony Albanese’s ability to manage the economy has plummeted. Nearly three-quarters of respondents in the latest Resolve Monitor Poll are concerned about levels of federal debt and 48 per cent are demanding the government slash spending.
- An investigation by this masthead has revealed members of a wealthy Christian sect formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren tailed politicians including Albanese, passing information on to far-right activists with a history of white supremacist associations.
- Disgraced Sydney developer Jean Nassif is scheduled to provide evidence at the Independent Commission Against Corruption today. The former Toplace boss fled Australia after his company collapsed, leaving behind billions of dollars of debt and widespread defects in his developments.
- As One Nation announced 750,000 temporary visas would be slashed over three years if it took power, NSW Premier Chris Minns urged universities to play a greater role in housing international students.
- A major insurer believes self-driving cars have evolved to the point where reduced collision risks warrant cheaper insurance premiums. Zurich Insurance said it will offer discounted premiums to drivers who insure a Tesla that uses Full Self-Driving (FSD) Supervised mode.
Liberal frontbencher Jane Hume says One Nation’s broad migration cuts could plunge Australia into recession, calling on Hanson’s party to release the modelling underpinning the policy.
Interviewed on ABC Radio National on Monday morning, Hume said the policy was simply “headline numbers” without any detail, saying landing on the correct migration settings was important to protect the economy.
“Because we know that if you get your migration program wrong, well then all Australians will pay a price,” she said.
“Even already today, economists have come out and said that potentially, with the numbers that One Nation is throwing around, you could send the economy into recession, and that means everybody will end up paying for a poorly thought-through migration policy.”
Hume condemned Pauline Hanson’s criticism of Anthony Albanese’s mother for living in social housing as “gratuitous and unnecessary”, linking the “distasteful” remarks to the Queensland senator’s campaign against Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie.
“Senator Hanson has also disrespected our veteran community with her atrocious comments about Andrew Hastie in that cartoon,
“Calling a veteran a traitor is possibly the worst thing you can do, but this does seem to be a common theme in One Nation now. That’s unnecessarily provocative rhetoric.“
Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie says Pauline Hanson’s “nasty, grubby politics” campaign against him demonstrates her “true character” and isn’t fit to be prime minister.
The One Nation leader had failed to answer whether the other SAS combat veterans who provided evidence in the Federal Court against Ben Roberts-Smith were also traitors, Hastie said.
“That’s why I’ve defended myself, but I’m also standing up for other veterans because it’s not just about me,” Hastie told the Today show on Monday morning.
“And I think this sort of nasty, grubby politics underscores Pauline Hanson’s true character, and with Australia facing a once-in-a-generation cost of living crisis, with artificial intelligence coming at us very hard and fast, I think she’s revealed that she doesn’t have what it takes to be prime minister of this country.”
Hastie, the opposition spokesman for industry and sovereign capability, said with details on Hanson’s migration policy scant on Monday morning, the “economic, the fiscal, and the human impact” remained unclear.
Barnaby Joyce says questions about Pauline Hanson’s criticism of the prime minister’s mother should be answered by the Queensland senator.
Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek attacked Joyce, juxtaposing his education at a “beautiful boarding school, getting three meals a day” against the experience of Albanese’s mother, Maryanne Ellery, who suffered rheumatoid arthritis.
Asked repeatedly whether Hanson should apologise for her comments, Joyce initially criticised the prime minister’s story about growing up in public housing, before defending the One Nation leader saying she didn’t know all the issues around the “specific case”.
“Well, that’s really a question for Pauline to answer. I’m not going to start answering questions on anybody,” Joyce said on Seven’s Sunrise on Monday morning.
Health Minister Mark Butler has condemned One Nation’s plan to slash temporary migration by 750,000 visa holders, saying the policy would decimate industries reliant on migrant workers like construction and aged care.
However, Butler was non-committal about when the government would finally announce Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke’s migration policy, saying he would not “set a time frame on it”.
Foreign temporary visa holders would be slashed by 750,000 under a plan announced by One Nation on Monday, with international students and family members of short-term migrants targeted under the plan.
Butler was critical of the announcement, saying the measure would cause significant economic damage.
“This would absolutely smash industries like construction that rely very heavily on migrant workers, but also devastate health and aged care and disability sectors that particularly rely upon migrant workers, especially in rural communities where it’s very difficult to find Australian-trained doctors,” Butler said on Nine’s Today show this morning.
One Nation will cut temporary migrant numbers by 750,000 over three years by targeting international students and the families of those on skilled migrant visas, The Australian Financial Review reports.
Citing the student crackdown introduced by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson is quoted as saying: “Vested interests and elite economists will shriek at the prospect of these cuts. But Canada has shown you can cut migrant numbers, take pressure off rents and still grow the economy.”
Under the plan, skilled visas sponsored by employers will be uncapped, but recipients will not be able to bring their families.
A new prestige student visa for 15,000 students in high-demand PhD and other postgraduate courses will allow their families secondary visas, but student numbers would be capped at 100,000 a year.
Voters have consistently backed One Nation on migration in the Resolve Political Monitor, nominating the party as the best placed to tackle the issue of immigration, even as Hanson, her treasury spokesman Barnaby Joyce and new MP David Farley have regularly contradicted each other on how far to reduce overall numbers.
President Donald Trump has downplayed concerns about AI and the need for his administration to slow its development, saying he was worried about ceding America’s edge to China in a global competition and that winning would help address the risks posed by the advancing technology.
While acknowledging the need for some regulation, Trump provided no specifics about potential rules and attributed warnings about the technology moving too quickly and with little oversight to “negative forces” he did not identify.
“We can put guardrails, we can do this and that, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that … shouldn’t be bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen,” Trump told reporters during a weekend trip to Ireland. “But whoever wins with AI wins.”
At the weekend, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei said the industry should slow the pace of fast-moving AI development to give safety measures time to catch up. Other tech leaders, including Elon Musk and Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, publicly agreed with Amodei.
Welcome to our rolling live coverage of all the latest news and developments around Australia and the world this Monday, September 14.
Here is what’s making news today.
- Voters’ trust in Anthony Albanese’s ability to manage the economy has plummeted. Nearly three-quarters of respondents in the latest Resolve Monitor Poll are concerned about levels of federal debt and 48 per cent are demanding the government slash spending.
- An investigation by this masthead has revealed members of a wealthy Christian sect formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren tailed politicians including Albanese, passing information on to far-right activists with a history of white supremacist associations.
- Disgraced Sydney developer Jean Nassif is scheduled to provide evidence at the Independent Commission Against Corruption today. The former Toplace boss fled Australia after his company collapsed, leaving behind billions of dollars of debt and widespread defects in his developments.
- As One Nation announced 750,000 temporary visas would be slashed over three years if it took power, NSW Premier Chris Minns urged universities to play a greater role in housing international students.
- A major insurer believes self-driving cars have evolved to the point where reduced collision risks warrant cheaper insurance premiums. Zurich Insurance said it will offer discounted premiums to drivers who insure a Tesla that uses Full Self-Driving (FSD) Supervised mode.
