Asked how she believes the Australian government should respond, Julie Webb-Pullman says:

Well, I think that there’s several breaches of international law that the Australian Government is a signatory to several conventions that the Israeli Government has breached, that they should at the very least be condemning the Israeli government for its breaches of international law, but particularly those relating to Australian citizens.

I think that they should be taking serious action, such as expelling the Israeli ambassador at the very least. Also, imposing sanctions on Israel, as is required by the International Court of Justice decision, which Israel was given time to comply with, and it expired in September, and to which they have still not complied. And also, we should be ending all arms trade with Israel, because these weapons that we are supplying the components for are the ones being used against our sons and daughters on the flotilla and also against the people of Palestine. And our taxes are paying for the weapons that are killing Palestinians in this genocide. So, the Australian Government is making us complicit in genocide, and they should be taking very serious steps to end their complicity and genocide.

Q: We had Richard Marles on earlier saying that they supply non-lethal components to the F-35. What do you make of that?

Webb-Pullman:

That’s a bit of a nonsense. We make the components that enable the bomb doors to open to drop the bombs. Without those parts, no bombs could be dropped from the F-35s. So, that’s a complete fiction. It’s an attempt to side step the very real responsibility that Australia has for these deaths.

Julie Webb-Pullman, the mother of Dr Bianca Webb-Pullman who is being held by Israeli authorities for participating in the legal humanitarian Sumad Flotilla mission says her daughter’s medication was seized by Israeli forces and thrown away in front of her. Webb-Pullman says DFAT have told her that Israel is unable to provide her daughter with her medication (but not much else).

She told the ABC:

It’s been pretty patchy. I have had to make all of the efforts, except for the day on which they did a consular visit, and finally, that’s the only time that they ever did actually contact me. Which was on Saturday. But every other contact has been at my initiation. They do not give updates. I have to ring them every morning. I rang them at 3:30am yesterday morning. They are not very good at all.

As to when Webb-Pullman’s daughter and the other Australians being held by Israel in one of its most notorious prisons may be released, she told the ABC:

I called them just before I came in today. And they said that they are in negotiations at the moment. That they expect and they are hoping that they will be released to Jordan, but they’re negotiating with Jordanian authorities. So that’s what they are expecting is that they will be bussed to Jordan and then flown back.

…we [the families of the detained Australians] have a Whatsapp group that was set up only about a day ago. So it is a very new group. So it’s been only very brief time that we have been in touch. And the other families are worried, because the New Zealanders have all been announced to being released tomorrow – well, today our time. But tomorrow their time, kind of. But they’ve been announced that they are being released. Whereas the Australians haven’t. So people are a bit annoyed that every other person seems to be getting their citizens out. Ireland, there’s US citizens, and many other citizens have been released, but no Australians.

Julie Webb-Pullman said her daughter felt it her duty to try and break Israel’s illegal blockade in Gaza, which is denying citizens of the basics of life:

I was very worried. I was very worried for her on her own account, but also because I worked as a war crimes can investigator in Gaza, and the work that my teams did was instrumental on getting the full investigation into the Palestine Situation opened by the International Criminal Court. And also, we managed to provide a lot of evidence that saw the arrest warrants be issued for Netanyahu and Gallant and the others. So, I was concerned that if she was detained, that she would be treated badly because our name is unusual and it would be quite obvious that she is my daughter. So I felt that that would put her at risk. But she did not want to… that did not deter her.

Independent MPs Kate Chaney, Monique Ryan and Andrew Wilkie and independent senator David Pocock will hold a joint press conference in response to the Four Corners episode last night on the ongoing damage from gambling.

Pocock says it has been 832 days (2.2 years) since the Murphy report into the need for gambling advertisement reform was handed down – and there is still no formal response to the 31 recommendations.

The first of the senate estimates hearings are about to get underway. The Coalition will be focusing on some of its ‘niche’ topics as its priority. What does that include? Australian citizens returning to Australia under strict conditions, because that is how Australian citizenship works under the law (but it sounds a lot more scary when you label it ‘ISIS brides’), whether the National Climate Risk Assessment has been exaggerated (if anything it’s under-estimating the urgency, but since when did facts bother the Coalition when it comes to climate) and ‘controversial’ statements from within the Australian Human Rights Commission (given the definition of controversial according to the Coalition, one assumes it includes comments like – January 26 as Australia Day is a day of mourning for Indigenous Australians and that celebrating it can compound racism – because in 2025, facts are allegedly, ‘controversial’)

You can read more on the impacts of climate change and insurance, here.

And that is before we even get to the climate impact risk assessment report which included 1.5 million Australians may find their homes unable to be lived in, by 2050.

AAP has covered the latest report showing that insurance in this country is going to continue to rise because of climate change (while you can still get it)

A “perfect storm” of more frequent natural disasters, poor planning decisions and high inflation is driving up insurance costs for all Australians, but particularly the nation’s most vulnerable households, a new report warns.

Extreme weather events including floods, storms, bushfires and earthquakes cost Australians around $4.5 billion annually, the research from the Insurance Council shows.

It also warns climate change is making natural disasters more expensive every year.

“The acceleration is undeniable,” the Insurance Catastrophe Resilience Report says.

Council chief executive Andrew Hall said high inflation had pushed up the cost of repairing homes and businesses, making the recovery from major disasters more expensive.

“Australia’s had the perfect storm of insurance challenges,” he told AAP.

He said the impact of extreme weather, particularly flooding, was often concentrated on disadvantaged households.

Remember how I said in the welcome post that the government was really looking forward to the mess of the Coalition? Well, Anthony Albanese gets his first chance to trot out the favoured line:

Oh look, I’ll just continue to watch them fighting each other. I’ll be fighting for your viewers and fighting for Australians.

Anthony Albanese is speaking to the Nine network where he is asked about his upcoming meeting with Donald Trump. Albanese says:

I’ve had really warm discussions with President Trump, and I received a quite lovely letter, I’ve got to say, of invitation to attend the White House. Australia and the United States have such an important relationship. They’re our most important ally.

We have an important economic relationship as well. They’re major investors here in Australia. America enjoys a trade surplus with Australia. Our defence and security relationship is so important through the Aukus agreements. I’ve just been in the UK talking with Prime Minister Starmer and the Defence Minister Healey and others there as well, about how important that is.

When I was in the US at the UN, I was able to engage with President Trump, but also with people like Scott Bessent, the Secretary of the Treasury, as well, about our important economic relationship, security, relationship and people to people relationship as well.

Q: Two years into this deadly conflict, so many people dead, just a tragic loss of life. When will there be greater transparency of our military exports? Particularly in relation to the F-35 program? An ABC investigation published yesterday revealed that detailed information about many parts manufactured in Australia are no longer available online. Why is that?

Richard Marles:

Firstly, there is great transparency in terms of all of our exports that are controlled around the world and there is great transparency in terms of exports in this circumstance. We’ve been really clear we are not exporting weapons to Israel. And have made that clear from the outset and, you know, there’s all sorts of attempts to put information into the public domain but the simple fact is we are not exporting weapons to Israel. We are an F-35 country. We have been participating in the F-35 supply chain for many, many years now. I mean the F-35 program has been going on for more than two decades and, again, all of that is on the public record. But what we do in terms of the F-35 supply chain is supply to the prime contractor which is Lockheed Martin out of the United States. It’s part of our obligation in terms of participating in the F-35 project…

Q: Sorry to interrupt, Richard Marles, we also have human rights and legal commitments alongside our export commitments, don’t we?

Marles:

Of course we do and we maintain all of those commitments and we absolutely have those and we rigorously apply those, but let’s also be clear the F-35 is at the heart of the Royal Australian Air Force. It’s at the heart of our military aviation capability and we’re not going to do anything which jeopardises that. We will maintain all our obligations under humanitarian international law, which we absolutely do. And we also maintain transparency here.

The government has not maintained transparency and DOES export weapon parts. The parts of the F-35 supply chain Australia provides are assembled in America, where the planes are then sold to Israel, and have been used in the non-stop bombing of Gazan civilians. International law doesn’t make exceptions for ‘military aviation capability’ in determining what was, and wasn’t, done to stop a genocide.

That interview continues:

Q: There is a planned demonstration, we understand, at the Opera House this weekend. Does the Government take a view on whether or not that is appropriate?

Richard Marles:

Well, firstly, there are obviously legal proceedings which will play out, and that’s a matter for the courts. I’ll come back to what I said – right now is a moment to commemorate and remember what happened two years ago was an appalling terrorist attack. There’s no ifs and buts about that. Now, a lot has played out in the course of the last two years. Our Government has been very clear about that. We have had front and in terms of our focus the humanitarian situation, the loss of innocent lives, be it Palestinian or Israeli, and that’s where we will continue to be, as we will continue to be in a place of supporting what gives rise to enduring solutions for peace and that’s where the Government is it. But I think we do need to acknowledge that, on this day, the Jewish community in this country is obviously feeling a sense of pain and it’s very important that that’s respected and that there is the appropriate remembrance and commemoration of the events that occurred two years ago on this day.

Q: Australians arrested trying to break Australia’s naval blockade of Gaza say they’ve been physically beaten and mistreated by Israeli authorities. What is the Government’s understanding of what’s happened to these people?

Marles:

Well, look, we’re engaging with Israeli authorities. We’re obviously providing consular assistance to those who are… Who have been involved in this and we will continue to do that. I’m not about to go into it in more detail than that. But we will continue to provide consular assistance to those who are involved. Clearly, you know, we had made it clear that Australians should not be in a position of trying to breach the blockade which exists and that was very much a matter in terms of their own personal safety, but in the circumstances that are now there, we will continue to provide consular assistance to these people