Read the national news blog for live coverage of today’s top stories.
Read the national news blog for live coverage of today’s top stories.
Pacific Islanders in Australia under a working visa scheme will have to wait nine months longer for changes that would boost their wages.
The Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme allows workers from 10 countries can come to Australia and be employed across a range of sectors – including agriculture and meat processing – to fill labour gaps.
They have to be paid for at least 120 hours per month, but this was set to change to at least 30 hours a week from July 1.
Hours would be averaged over the course of a month, meaning some weeks workers could do 20 hours and then others more than 40.
By ensuring people need to be paid for 30 hours a week, this could increase wage payments as businesses would need to account for extra hours in slower weeks, and then still pay overtime in busier weeks.
This change has now been pushed back until March 31, 2026 as the federal government reviews the terms following consultations.
“We’ve listened very closely to PALM stakeholders, farmers, labour hire firms, unions, Pacific nations,” Employment Minister Murray Watt said.
“Our view is it’s best to leave the PALM settings as they are for the moment while we better understand the impact of the changes that we’ve made.”
AAP
Senators have been warned to be respectful to department officials after a complaint was made about their treatment in a parliamentary hearing following fiery exchanges.
A witness in the environment and communications committee complained to the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service about how they were treated during today’s hearings.
Senators were briefed on the matter following the lunch break and received a copy of the support service’s guidelines on their desks.
Committee chair Karen Grogan began the session after lunch by reminding all senators of “their obligations under the behaviour code for Australian parliamentarians to treat witnesses with dignity, courtesy, fairness and respect”.
“That includes not badgering, haranguing, harassing or raising your voice at witnesses, and not interrupting witnesses who are attempting to answer a question,” she said.
The Tuesday morning session included the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts and then the Australian Communications and Media Authority before the lunch break.
AAP
Washington: A top Trump trade adviser has fired a fresh broadside at US allies who levy additional taxes on American tech companies, in a sign Australia’s latest plans to force social media giants to pay for news may antagonise the new administration.
Peter Navarro, who encouraged tariffs on Australia during US President Donald Trump’s first term, criticised countries for targeting American technology firms with digital services taxes to prop up their own industries.
“What these countries are doing is discriminating against our biggest tech companies,” Navarro told CNN. “They do it in a way [that] only applies to the very largest companies, and it’s always the American companies.
“Meanwhile, they use them to promote their own national champions inside the country. Effectively, they steal our tax revenues from us. It’s just outrageous.”
The comments came as Treasurer Jim Chalmers arrived in Washington, DC, for meetings with his US counterpart amid concerted efforts to convince the Trump administration to exempt Australia from planned tariffs.
Queensland senator James McGrath has again been involved in an argument over antisemitism, causing another Senate estimates hearing to be briefly suspended.
On Monday, Foreign Minister Penny Wong accused McGrath of weaponising antisemitism in a rowdy parliamentary hearing that eventually was shut down as opposition MPs questioned the government over the issue.
On Tuesday, Greens senator Barbara Pocock alleged that McGrath spoke over the top of women on the Senate’s finance and public administration committee.
“I will not sit here as a bystander and watch you do that, Senator McGrath, without calling you out for it,” Pocock told him on Tuesday afternoon.
“It is inappropriate. And further, you have referred to me as antisemitic.”
McGrath then spoke over the top of Pocock as he rejected her claim.
But the Greens senator continued: “I will complete my words, thank you. I will say what I need to say. I am the only Greens senator in this room, and you have referred to me and my party as antisemitic. I ask you to withdraw. It is a lie. It is not true, and I insist that you withdraw it.”
McGrath responded: “With due respect, Senator Pocock, I did not say that you personally were antisemitic or racist. Your party is an antisemitic, racist party and I will not withdraw that.”
The committee chair asked again for McGrath to withdraw, but he refused.
The session was then briefly suspended.
ABC news boss Justin Stevens has thrown a jab at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp stable, accusing the publisher of lacking an audience and obsessing over the ABC.
Stevens, speaking at a Senate estimates hearing moments ago, said the media company that owns The Australian and Sky News had an “obsession with taking scrutiny beyond scrutiny” and was “regularly agitating against the work of our journalists”.
“We’re flattered by their interest,” he joked.
“Despite their very small readership, we do engage and respond to a lot of their queries.”
Stevens acknowledged the ABC must accept scrutiny and own up to errors because it was publicly funded.
“Defending the work of our journalists … is very important,” he said.
ABC acting managing director Melanie Kleyn has denied the public broadcaster is trying to make its reporters fearful of expressing their views in the wake of the termination of journalist Antoinette Lattouf.
Lattouf was moved on from a short-term radio contract amid public complaints about her private social media posts about the war in Gaza.
The ongoing Federal Court matter has spawned a reckoning about the limits of private activism for journalists working for big media organisations.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has castigated News Corp’s The Australian for its coverage of the Lattouf matter and suggested the case would force journalists to be scared of airing their views.
“The ABC is not taking that position with regard to Ms Lattouf,” Kleyn told a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday.
Kleyn said the ABC continued to defend its position that Lattouf was not sacked, but admitted the organisation could learn from how the case was managed.
“Will we learn lessons? Will we reflect? We absolutely will reflect on this matter. We do reflect on this matter,” she said.
The ABC’s acting managing director, Melanie Kleyn, has dodged questions about a disagreement between the broadcaster’s former chair, Ita Buttrose, and managing director David Anderson in the Antoinette Lattouf case.
Buttrose this week wrote to ABC lawyers to dispute key evidence provided by Anderson to a federal court in the ongoing unlawful termination case brought against the public broadcaster by Lattouf.
During a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday, Kleyn declined to answer a barrage of questions from Liberal senator Sarah Henderson, a critic of the ABC who used to work as a journalist for the broadcaster.
“Senator, I would not be able to comment at all on the different witness statements,” Kleyn said.
The ABC has tried multiple times to settle out of court its damaging legal battle with journalist Antoinette Lattouf, the public broadcaster’s acting boss has said.
ABC acting managing director Melanie Kleyn has revealed that the ABC had so far spent $1.1 million on external lawyers on the case related to Lattouf’s alleged unlawful dismissal for her pro-Palestinian social media advocacy.
“The ABC has tried on multiple occasions to settle the matter,” Kleyn said in a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday.
“We do understand this is an impost on public funds.”
Kleyn would not answer questions about the case because it is still before the courts.
ABC executives appeared at a Senate estimates hearing in federal parliament today.
Watch the hearing here:
Donald Trump’s former chief of staff says Australia is “right to worry” it will be slapped with tariffs on steel and aluminium, despite intense lobbying and the US president saying he would consider an exemption.
Mick Mulvaney, who acted as Trump’s chief of staff from 2019 until early 2020 during the Republican leader’s tumultuous first term, spoke at the Universities Australia Solution Summit in Canberra on Tuesday.
He said protectionists had a greater influence within the White House in the Trump’s second term, and described key trade adviser Peter Navarro as “crazy”.
Navarro, a key architect of the tariffs imposed in the first Trump presidency, launched an extraordinary attack on Australian aluminium exporters two weeks ago, claiming they were flooding the American market, in a move to block exemptions for Australia from the new 25 per cent tariffs.
“You’re right to worry about Peter, he’s a lot more influential now. He went to jail for the president. That counts in that White House,” Mulvaney said in Canberra.
“I always thought Peter Navarro was crazy, but that’s just me. But you’re right to worry about it.”
Arthur Sinodinos, a former Australian ambassador to the United States, said Navarro’s views represented a threat to any Australian tariff exemption.
“I thought up until [Navarro’s] intervention we would get the exemption. I’m not so sure now because there’s a strong faction in the White House that believes in tariffs,” Sinodinos told the universities summit.
The comments come as Treasurer Jim Chalmers is in Washington to attend an Australian Superannuation Investment Summit ahead of a meeting with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Australian officials have been continuing to lobby American counterparts for tariff exemptions, which were put in place during Trump’s first term.
With AAP