It has been quite the morning, so let’s recap quickly:
The Greens are calling for the government to establish a national childcare watchdog, which is something advocacy group The Parenthood supports.
The Coalition is still blowing itself up over net zero and pretending it all matters. Late yesterday two Liberal senators voted against Pauline Hanson bringing on a motion to scrap net zero, and Liberal senator Alex Antic and LNP senator Matt Canavan (along with other Nats) voted for it. Sussan Ley had told the party room to abstain.
Labor is under pressure to set a 2035 climate target that is science backed and actually cuts emissions, rather than the least we can do state we are currently in. The UN climate chief, Simon Stiell told ABC radio national that fossil fuel expansions needed to stop.
The Greens are leaving a motion to set up a parliamentary review into Aukus on the Senate papers until they get the numbers.
There is a sickness at the centre of Australia’s childcare system. The profit motive.
Matt Grudnoff
Senior Economist
The profit motive is a great thing in the right industry.
But long ago we worked out that education wasn’t one of those industries. There is no profit motive driving school education in Australia.
Private schools in Australia are non-profit. They are run by school boards that are supposed to be focused on providing the best education for their students.
How does the government keep the for-profit sector out of school education? A for-profit school is ineligible for government funding.
We need to do the same for childcare.
The only priority of childcare providers should be the children in their care. They should not be distracted by the idea of keeping their shareholders happy.
Our youngest children deserve the best possible start in life, and that is not going to happen when providers are focused on making a profit.
Read more about how to fix the childcare system in my opinion piece in the New Daily
First Nations leaders, delegates from the Pacific Islands and climate impacted communities will be in parliament house a little later this morning, along with the Noqu Vanua Youth Initiative for a choir performance.
The group hope to get some attention from the Albanese government and commit to a science-backed 2035 climate plan.
Along with the choir performance, speakers will include:
Reverend Mata Hiliau: Moderator of the ACT/NSW Synod of the Uniting Church
Aunty McRose Elu from the Torres Strait, who has been a vocal supporter of the recent Australian Climate Case in Federal Court,
Malaemie Fruean: Chair of the NSW Council for Pacific Communities
Larissa Baldwin-Roberts: Co-founder of Common Threads
Jacynta Fa’amau: Pacific Regional Campaigner at 350.org
Response to an order for the production of documents relating to the draft 2025 electricity network options report – agreed to on 23 July 2025
Response to an order for the production of documents relating to Advice provided by the Treasury regarding housing – agreed to on 24 July 2025
Response to an order for the production of documents relating to aggregate expenditure made from the Housing Australia Future Fund – agreed to on 24 July 2025
In case you missed it yesterday, Labor MP Marion Scrymgour became the first Indigenous MP to sit in the House of Representatives Speakers’ chair.
The Lingiari MP has been appointed a member of the Speakers’ panel, which is a group of MPs who act as the Speaker when the Speaker is away from the chamber.
Meanwhile the NSW Labor government continues to try and quell peaceful, lawful protest.
There is a planned march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge this Sunday calling for the Australian government to act against Israel for its ongoing genocidal acts against Palestinian civilians in Gaza. There have been plenty of marches across the bridge for big moments in history.
But Chris Minns is not budging on this one.
Premier Chris Minns has emphatically stated the government "cannot support a protest of this scale". 👀
Back on “Liberation Day” when Trump announced his tariffs one the planet, Australia got a 10% tariff – the lowest of anyone.
So why might this now increase?
Other than Trump seeming to think 15% is a better number (and truly there might not be anything more to it than that – maybe he shot 15 on one of the holes he played in Scotland the other day) the big issue is pharmaceuticals.
Pharmaceutical companies make an absolute killing (in every sense of the word) in America, because its health system is essentially privatised extorsion.
They would like to do this everywhere else. The problem being that the EU, UK, Japan and Australia have much better health systems and as a result we pay less for our medicines.
How much less do we pay? Matt Grudnoff did a great report earlier this year outlining the price differences – and they are massive:
As you can see, in some cases Americans pay more than 100 times more than we do. This is why their health insurance costs so much and also why they are effectively held hostage by their jobs because losing health coverage is the difference between living and dying or at best bankruptcy.
Now Trump knows that getting lower drug prices in the US would be a huge win.
So his solution?
He wants everywhere else – including Australia – to allow drug companies to charge more so that in return those same companies will promise to charge Americans less.
The way he is trying to make that happen is to threaten everywhere else with high tariffs on all things if they don’t change their systems (like the PBS) to allow higher drug prices.
Now if you can see some flaws in this plan, you are rather more intelligent than anyone in the White House right now.
There is absolutely NO WAY the govt will do anything to weaken the PBS.
About the only way the govt could lose the next election is to weaken the PBS. The ALP knows this. The LNP knows this.
Any political party that weakens the PBS could kiss goodbye to being in govt for a generation.
There are not many fights the ALP will take with Trump – certainly not on AUKUS. But on the PBS is will gladly do so, and if Trump goes through with his threat, expect a Canadian-style response here.
Most people don’t care too much about international trade policy (I mean, just think about The Phantom Menace), but Trump trying to destroy the PBS will get people boycotting USA goods very quickly.
While we are on the US-EU trade deal, a friend of the blog just pointed out that it is already a giant mess with the US now contradicting everything the EU has said:
Believe it or not, the EU-US trade deal just got messier.The White House has published a fact-sheet about the agreement with claims that directly contradict the European Commission's version of events.Let's take a closer look.
This is why scrambling for a deal with Trump means nothing. The Trump administration will do what it wants for optics and there is no such thing as an ‘iron clad guarantee’ – Trump will change his mind as often as he wants. Read the whole thread – there is nothing to be gained by making concessions to the US.
