As it happened: Construction trades miss out on fast-tracked immigration; MPs react to minimum wage decision (2024)

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has renewed the government’s call for Israel and Hamas to adopt US President Joe Biden’s ceasefire proposal.

Wong shared a statement on social media, similar to one she posted to X yesterday, but with the added sentiment that she was “pleased to see growing international support, including from G7 leaders”.

“Any delay will only see further lives lost,” the statement concluded.

Soon after Veterans’ Affairs and Defence Personnel Minister Matt Keogh appeared on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing, he was followed by opposition defence spokesperson Andrew Hastie, who appeared off the back of a press conference where he criticised the “botched” announcement of a new policy that would allow certain foreign citizen to enlist in the ADF.

Hastie the government should have “clarity” on “something this huge and important”.

Addressing the confusion over which countries’ citizens would be included in the scheme, Hastie said:

Matt Keogh this morning said all other countries. Richard Marles in a door stop refused to rule out Chinese permanent residents. In question time he talked about New Zealand, and when we pushed him he came back to the question of January 1 and other countries, Five Eyes.

We want clarity. I don’t think they’ve cleaned this up.”

Hastie said that, in principle, it wasn’t that he was against serving alongside foreign nationals.

We already do lateral transfers within Five Eyes. I was stationed on a Collins Class submarine in 2021, the captain was a Canadian who transferred across. I have worked with people from all the Five Eyes countries in the ADF.”

He then rattled off his concerns with the proposal:

The question is, is that a good way to recruit people? There are a lot of questions that need answering before we support this.

Tomorrow through estimates we’ll be asking the hard questions: What security vetting processes will be in place? Will there be a return of service obligation on people who receive citizenship after 90 days of service in uniform? What is to stop them from getting citizenship and then leaving quickly if they come up with an injury or some other reason for leaving the ADF?”

Gas producer Santos has been fined $2.75 million for failing to provide the industry regulator with information to ensure market competition and place downward pressure on energy prices.

The Australian Energy Regulator brought proceedings in the Federal Court and Santos admitted that between March 2019 and June 2021 it contravened rule market rules on 4701 occasions.

Santos failed to keep the required records under the Day Ahead Auction gas supply market for the east coast.

Chair of AER board Clare Savage said accurate recordkeeping was key to the market operating in the interest of consumers.

“It is crucial that trust and confidence in the Day Ahead Auction is maintained for it to continue to deliver benefits to consumers,” Savage said.

Defence Personnel Minister Matt Keogh appeared on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing to try and clear up the government’s early morning announcement of an ADF recruitment expansion to allow certain foreign citizen permanent residents to enlist.

The interview comes after a press conference in which Opposition Leader Peter Dutton slammed the government’s announcement as “botched”, and suggested it was unclear which foreign citizens would be allowed to join the ADF and that the move presented a national security risk.

Keogh rejected Dutton’s assertion, saying “it’s all been made very clear actually”.

“From July 1 this year, New Zealanders who have been here as permanent residents for the last year will become eligible to join the ADF. From January 1 we expand that out to other Five Eyes countries. From January, we will also look to expand to other countries, with a particular focus on Pacific Islands,” Keogh said.

“This is a very sensible and considered move where you have to be already in Australia, have already been here for a year, as a permanent resident, and you still have to meet all the usual vetting and security requirements, including being otherwise eligible to become a citizen.”

When host Greg Jennett pushed Keogh on the fact that the expansion to “other countries” was unclear, Keogh said that it is “something that would evolve over time”.

“Crucially, what we’re saying here though is the way we’re doing that is looking at permanent residents – they’ve already made a commitment to Australia,” Keogh said.

A man – only going by the name of Eric – who says he worked as a spy for China’s secret police and defected to Australia is urging Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to use his upcoming meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang to speak about human rights matters.

Earlier in May, ABC’s Four Corners reported that Eric was an agent for the Chinese Political Security Protection Bureau and had been involved in missions to surveil, abduct and silence targets around the world, before presenting himself to ASIO in Canberra and revealing who he was.

Eric was outside Parliament House on Tuesday, after being invited by anti-Chinese Communist Party activist group Falun Gong to mark 35 years since the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Asked about Li’s meeting with Albanese, which is expected to take place mid-June, Eric said he understood the importance of bilateral relationships but hoped China’s human rights abuses would be brought up.

“I acknowledge that China is a totalitarian regime, but obviously for two modern nations to have this diplomatic relations and mutual visitation, it’s completely understandable and I appreciate that,” he said.

“As they engage in dialogue … when the dialogue goes inevitably into trade and matters of economic relations, I would like to see a greater conversation in relation to human rights matters.”

The Herald and The Age’s CBD columnists noticed a very funny exchange during the usually bone-dry Senate estimates this morning.

This is Noel Towell and Kishor Napier-Raman’s account of what happened in the Australian Securities & Investments Commission hearings:

CBD salutes Liberal senator Jane Hume for brightening up the Canberra winter gloom just a touch on Tuesday morning as she welcomed ASIC’s chairman Joe Longo – Hume’s sort-of gym buddy, it turns out – to the day’s proceedings.

‘I feel this is very awkward – every time I see Mr Longo now, it seems to be at the gym on Saturday mornings, so I apologise for the Lycra,’ the Victorian senator said.

‘Less worthy men have seen me in far less.’

Hume indulged herself in a long pause in which she appeared to be shocked herself as the room broke up around her, before she continued.

‘Sorry, I forgot myself for a moment. I’m going to ask some questions about something serious now.’”

Watch the moment back below, and read the full column here.

NSW Housing Minister Rose Jackson has flagged public housing maintenance reforms in the upcoming state budget after a western Sydney townhouse exploded on Saturday, killing one woman.

Jackson on Tuesday morning said police had now taken control of the explosion site in Whalan and will bring in experts to formally determine what triggered the blast.

“We are still receiving information about the maintenance on the property. Just to be clear, currently maintenance is outsourced in NSW public housing,” she said.

“[Police] indicated to me that they’re looking at two to three days, they’re bringing experts on-site to assess the situation to determine what caused the explosion. As soon as we have information from them, we’ll be releasing that.”

Public housing maintenance is currently outsourced in NSW, but last year the state government announced plans to bring it back in-house from July.

“Maintenance calls are not being responded to quickly enough, call-outs are not happening quickly enough, our work isn’t being done quickly enough,” Jackson said.

“Under the previous government, maintenance was funded from the sale of properties. So the only way you got $1 to spend fixing a property was by selling another property. That’s one of the reasons why the dollars were so short, and also why they went backwards in terms of overall stock numbers,” Jackson explained.

“Again, we changed that in the last budget, and we’ll have more to say in this budget in terms of public housing maintenance going forward.”

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has labelled the government’s claim that he oversaw the release of 1300 non-citizens during his time as immigration minister as a “smokescreen”.

Asked about Prime Minister Anthony Albanese accusing the Coalition of releasing 1300 “hardcore criminals”, Dutton said he never watered down any laws.

“I was, in some cases, given the advice that constitutionally there was nothing further we could do in relation to particular cases. I never watered down any laws and I’m very happy to have the discussion but be properly informed instead of just trotting out the government’s lines,” he said.

“I’m happy to look at the brief and have a look at the detail, but it’s a smokescreen right, and to be honest, 95 per cent of the media aren’t reporting it because it’s a nonsense argument.”

Dutton then went on to lash the government for bringing in “over 900,000 people over two years but only building 65,000 homes”.

“No wonder we’ve got the housing crisis in our country, you’ve got housing approvals at an 11-year low and the government is putting at the top of the list yoga teachers and knocking off the list carpenters, bricklayers and other tradespeople,” he said.

If the Coalition were to win government, Dutton said all tradespeople would be at “the top of our list”.

“We want to see more of those trades coming in because as everyone knows, the cost to build a house in our country has gone up dramatically,” he said.