Australia politics live: Angus Taylor rebukes Andrew Bragg for expressing ‘personal views’ on migration numbers; Chris Minns steps in to deflect melon-gate question to PM
Opposition leader says he has ‘made clear’ to Bragg that his job is to express the views of the Coalition. Follow today’s news live
Telstra CEO receives $700k pay rise even after 20% bonus cut over nationwide outage
Luca Ittimani
Telstra has paid its chief executive, Vicki Brady, $6.8m for the year ending in June, after docking 20% of her bonus in response to the network’s nationwide outage last month.
The company reported financial results today and said its board decided to cut Brady’s bonus by $607,000 when it met on Monday. Brady took home $6.1m the year before, so she still got a $700,000 pay rise.
The company has faced heavy political criticism for its handling of the outage, which it has blamed on the lack of a software update on a key time-keeping system.
Telstra also docked 20% of the bonus for its former networks group executive and 10% of all other senior executives, the equivalent of $1.3m unpaid. The company’s results show senior executives were paid $20.7m combined for the year.
The company reported its profits rose to $2.4bn, from $2.3bn the prior year. It paid shareholders a dividend of 21 cents per share over the year.
The strong result was helped by job cuts, with employee numbers falling 1,219 to total 29,334 by June. It was also helped by steep price rises: income from mobile phones rose $300m, with customers paying an extra 7.2% on prepaid handheld plans and an extra 3.4% on postpaid handheld plans. Despite the rising prices, Telstra sold 1m more mobile plans, and now has 26m services in operation.
Icac witness responds to ‘shake down Angus’ message
Returning to the NSW Icac, Catholic Schools CEO Dallas McInerney has been asked about a message he wrote in March 2021 about federal opposition leader Angus Taylor.
McInerney, who is a factional ally of Taylor, sent a message to Reformer Robert Assaf, later shared by Assaf with other members of the group, in which he wrote:
I have breakfast club with ministers this Thursday morning, who can I get an update from? Re SCD [state council delegate] progress in the last six to 12 months. I want to shake down Angus for 10k.
McInerney accepts he wrote the message and that it refers a to a breakfast meeting with NSW Liberal ministers, as well as a separate request to Taylor, but says the money referred to was not for the Reformers. He says:
The state council delegate count is a proxy measure of the standing of the faction relative to the whole of the party. So I was mindful to bring an update of that measure to the meeting. Further, I was going to approach Angus for support for upcoming internal elections and what could be directed to our candidates in the key seats.
He said any money from Taylor would be for “whoever was subsequently put in place to run the campaign on behalf of the faction” and was “entirely independent” of the Reformers. He said the funds would go to “printing brochures, pamphlets, postage, mailout”. He has not yet been asked if Taylor ever made a payment.
He is asked if the phrase “shake down” is of “a perhaps pejorative tone”. “No, no, it wasn’t intended as such. It’s a turn of phrase,” he says.
Taylor has not been named in Icac’s allegations and has repeatedly denied he ever made payments to the Reformers.
Taylor staffer verbally attacks 10 news journalist over Icac questions
One of Angus Taylor’s staffers has gone a bit ham, verbally attacking journalist Ashleigh Raper over her questions to the Liberal leader about whether he spoke with Dallas McInerney about sending money to the reformers group.
During the press conference, Taylor repeatedly said he would not provide a running commentary on the Icac probe.
But as soon as the press conference ended, and while cameras were still running, staffer Kane Silom was heard rebuking Raper.
Are your ratings that bad? Seriously, that’s a fricking disgrace.
Labor senator, Tony Sheldon, has subsequently verbally attacked Taylor and said he needs to answer the questions Raper was asking. He told the media:
What did you Angus Taylor know about branch stacking activities in Liberal branches, and did you have any conversations with DallasMcInerney about funding for those operations? He has refused to answer those question on several occasions when he was asked today, he needs to come clean.
NSW opposition leader removes upper house member from state executive
The NSW opposition leader, Kellie Sloane, has removed upper house member Chris Rath as her representative on the party’s state executive after the NSW Icac heard evidence about how he assisted members of conservative factional group the Reformers.
On Wednesday, Jeremy Greenwood told the commission that during a parliamentary inquiry which preceded Icac’s probe, Rath sent him a photo of a committee paper with his old address saying process servers had attempt to issue him with summons there. Greenwood was read a message from Reformer Jean-Claude Perrottet advising of a committee meeting on serving summons. “Rath will tell us result after,” Jean-Claude Perrottet wrote.
The opposition leader, Kellie Sloane, has declined to make a decision about Rath’s future on her front bench until after Icac’s hearings conclude. The shadow planning and arts minister, who received a caution from the parliamentary privileges committee in 2023 and recused himself from the inquiry, has been referred to the privileges committee a second time over the incident.
In a statement following a Sydney Morning Herald report about the assistance he had provided to members of the Reformers, Rathe, said he was “apologetic”:
This Inquiry commenced in the highly politically charged context of an election campaign, and at the time I didn’t comprehend the gravity of the allegations ... I am not under investigation by Icac, nor have I been called as a witness to the inquiry or asked to provide any evidence.
Australians should get a financial stake in Tomago smelter, Greens say
The Greens say the public should get a stake in the Tomago aluminium smelter, after the government announced a $2.5bn bailout package.
The package is funded 50-50 by the New South Wales government and commonwealth.
The Greens senator Penny Allman-Payne says a public stake would ensure Australians get a proper share of wealth from national resources and increase worker security:
We can’t trust private companies with our workers, our resources, or our climate.
The big-business parties seem to love anything that privatises the profits from Australian resources. They endlessly funnel public funds into propping up the dying projects of multinational corporations, often the same corporations driving the climate crisis, with no return on investment for the everyday Australian.
Greens senator Penny Allman-Payne. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Nationals MP makes fiery speech on discarding of gambling reform recommations
Nationals MP Pat Conaghan has made a fiery speech in the House of Representative about gambling reforms.
He referred to explosive evidence heard at the parliamentary inquiry into the legislation earlier this month, where former rugby league star Luke Bateman alleged gambling company promoters supplied him with cocaine and alcohol and the betting industry exercised no duty of care.
Conaghan was deputy chair of the parliamentary committee led by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy, that handed down the ‘you win some, you lose more’ report in June 2023.
Witness after witness came into this place and spoke of loved ones, family members, who were targeted by predatory online wagering services. Some of them survived deputy speaker. Some of them didn’t.
And we heard evidence, from a family member who had to cut down her brother, from a tree. Because he was targeted, even though he had tried and tried and tried to get away from these practices of online wagering services. And there are other people whose family members didn’t survive …
I ask, what’s the point? What is the point of being on a committee that delivers 31 recommendations unanimously? … This comes from evidence from people who have been affected. This comes from the intelligence of every single member sitting in this place on that committee, and we say, this is what should be implemented. Just to be discarded.
Jason Clare says trust in the Australian Research Council was damaged under the Coalition
The education minister says the Australian Research Council (ARC) needs “trust” to pursue its best ideas in a dig at accusations of political interference under the Coalition.
Speaking on its 25th anniversary in Canberra on Thursday, Jason Clare said:
The role of the ARC is to give our best researchers the opportunity to follow their best ideas. And that requires something else. Trust. Trust in researchers. Trust in peer review. Trust in the institutions we establish to make these decisions.
And over the years, that trust had been damaged. Before we came to Government, the ARC was bedevilled by political interference. That wasn’t good for our universities. It wasn’t good for businesses who work with our universities either.
Clare said Labor removed the power of ministers to approve ARC grants because “politicians should not decide which physicist, historian or mathematician has written the better research proposal”.
Research excellence should be judged by people who understand the research.
National Union of Students calls out One Nation’s ‘racist policies’ ahead of nationwide protest
The National Union of Students (NUS) says they will not “sit quietly” ahead of a nationwide protest against Pauline Hanson’sOne Nation, taking place from 1pm today.
The walkout was organised by the NUS, which represents tertiary education students in Australia. Students will gather in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Canberra, Adelaide, Brisbane, Newcastle and Wollongong in opposition to the party’s “racist policies”.
Its national president, Felix Hughes, said:
Pauline Hanson’s racist politics are not welcome on our campuses or in our communities. Pauline Hanson has spent decades making racism a political strategy. Students will not sit quietly while One Nation tries to drag those politics further into the mainstream.
Hughes also backed international students as “our classmates, not our enemies”:
They are not responsible for the housing crisis or the cost of living, and we will not let Hanson turn students against each other to advance her racist politics.
Students also organised mass moratorium marches against Hanson’s growing popularity in the 1990s.
Greens praise David McBride after his release from prison
The Greens are celebrating the parole of David McBride from prison today after the former army lawyer served his full non-parole period of 27 months.
Their justice spokesperson, Senator David Shoebridge, said McBride had paid a “terrible price for telling the truth”.
It’s a price no whistleblower should ever be made to pay again. The Albanese government has had the power to free David since they got elected and refused to act … David walks out of prison today and he holds his head high, having spoken the truth and faced the full force of the state.
Shoebridge also called for better protection of whistleblowers, calling McBride’s sentencing a “warning to every public servant who might one day consider speaking up”.
When I have visited him in prison during his more than two years locked up, David’s commitment to truth has been unwavering and I know he took immense comfort in the support he has in the community at large.
Minns steps in as Albanese faces more heat on melon-gate
The New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, stepped in to defend the PM and deflect questions over melongate which have plagued Anthony Albanese all week.
Chris Minns and Anthony Albanese at Tomago Aluminium in NSW this morning. Photograph: Darren Pateman/AAP
At the press conference in Tomago earlier, Albanese was again asked what he meant by his comments and hand gestures in the now infamous Bush Deep podcast before Minns intervened and said:
Go and ask 1,000 workers what they care about today. This is the biggest announcement for this region in a generation.
Can we just talk about it for 5 minutes?
(They had spent already well over five minutes talking about the announcement).
‘A terrific speech’: Canavan supports Bragg but warns against changing backpacker visa numbers
The Nationals leader, Matt Canavan, says he doesn’t want to see working holiday visas touched in the effort to reduce migration numbers.
But he’s playing nice, saying his colleague Andrew Bragg gave a “terrific speech” to the National Press Club yesterday.
Matt Canavan this morning. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Bragg said that net overseas migration numbers should be dropped to 180,000 a year (in the 2024-25 financial year the NOM was 306,000, and is predicted to drop to about 260,000 in the 2025-26 financial year). He said the way to get there is to drop the number of international students, working holiday visas and family visas.
Canavan told a press conference a little earlier:
Look, I thought Andrew gave a terrific speech. He’s doing excellent work on exposing the deficiencies in the government’s housing agenda, the almost complete lack of homes that are being built.
All Andrew said was that we’ll look at all these things to bring migration numbers down. Now, I will say, though, that as leader of the Nationals party, we will not be changing, we’ll not be seeking changes to working holiday visa makers, because that’s not the reason why we’ve had the surge in migration.