We are going to pull the pin because the parliament just has the smell of shenanigans to it and honestly – it is the Wednesday of the second sitting week and no one has the energy for this. Certainly not mine.

There are more meetings – Penny Wong will meet with Yulia Navalnaya (who I believe will also be meeting with Sussan Ley) and then there is also tomorrow’s final round of bullshit before the parliament rests until estimates and the house sitting in October.

The FOI changes will be introduced tomorrow. So that will be fun.

Glenn Connley will take you through tomorrow, as I have an unavoidable commitment. I will miss you. But we will be back together soon. Glenn will keep you entertained tomorrow – so I hope you have fun!

So until next time – be good(ish) and please – take care of you. Ax

There has been a roundtable on AI at parliament today – Rachel Jackson of AAP covers that here:

When an opportunity arose to work with artificial intelligence and messaging, bank teller Kathryn Sullivan embraced it as a welcome change.

But Ms Sullivan was inadvertently training a chatbot that would lead to the end of her 25-year career at Commonwealth Bank.

It’s an experience that pushed the 63-year-old to share her story at an AI symposium in Canberra on Wednesday, which brought workers, unions, ministers and tech leaders together to discuss the future of new technologies.

Ms Sullivan said she liked the idea of having tools that could help her provide better services, but there needed to be more consultation for affected workers.

Before being made redundant in July, she had no idea that her job was on the line.

“I was completely shell-shocked, alongside my colleague,” Ms Sullivan told AAP.

“We just feel like we were nothing, we were a number.”

The bank then did a U-turn on the job cuts, offering Ms Sullivan and colleagues their positions back weeks later.

But the role was different to the one Ms Sullivan had left, and she was not guaranteed her position would remain secure, so she opted for the redundancy.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Australia’s peak union body embraced a government push to harness artificial intelligence as a force for growth, while advocating for laws that businesses fear will stifle the technology.

Australian Council of Trade Unions assistant secretary Joseph Mitchell said there needed to be an agenda that empowered jobs, workers and growth through AI.

His speech followed the government’s economic reform roundtable, where the regulation of AI formed a major dividing line between employers and unions.

But Mr Mitchell said the meeting delivered a positive breakthrough.

“While rhetoric and reporting suggests an unbridgeable gulf between workers, users, developers and employers on AI – the reality is different,” he said.

“Unions and the tech industry are engaging to find ways to protect and promote our creative sector workers and academics.”

Introducing AI laws is essential to ensure employers and workers are consulted before new technologies are introduced, as well as to protect creatives’ work from large-scale tech company theft, Mr Mitchell said.

Workers’ voices must remain at the centre of AI adoption, Assistant Productivity Minister Andrew Leigh assured unions at Wednesday’s meeting.

“The Australian ideal of the ‘fair go’ means that prosperity is shared,” he said, meaning “technology should serve people, not the other way around”.

The minister welcomed AI as a force for good, describing the technology as a “once-in-a-generation chance” to restore workers’ dignity after decades of rising inequality and casualisation.

Labor senator Tim Ayres raised questions about the extent Australia adopts technology from overseas, rather than shaping the landscape ourselves.

“How we co-operate and collaborate with our neighbours and partners and competitors on these questions is up for grabs,” he told the meeting.

Following the productivity roundtable, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the government would perform a “gap analysis” of Australia’s existing laws to determine whether AI regulation would require a dedicated AI act.

The analysis is expected to be delivered by the end of 2025.

Cranky Tony Burke

Monique Ryan, the member for Kooyong asked:

“The government’s currently undertaking a gas market review with the premise that we need new gas production for our domestic needs. However, only 16% of Australian LNG was sold to the domestic market last year, the rest was exported. More than enough gas for our domestic needs is sold daily on the spot market and exported. Why is the government supporting more gas projects when we have more than enough already? When will you intervene to protect our access to our own gas resources?”

Minister Bowen replied, “we do have a plentiful supply of gas in Australia”.

Good to know.   

Former Australian foreign minister, former NSW premier Bob Carr and former Victoria premier Dan Andrews are attending the major military parade being held in Beijing, China this morning. The parade commemorates the 80th anniversary of victory in the Second World War.

Their critics in Australia were quick to point out that Andrews and Carr will joining leaders of “rogue regimes” (to use the scary quotes)—Russia, North Korea, and Iran. But these critics won’t tell you that 23 other world leaders are there as well, including the leaders of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Should we condemn them too? Is anyone going to seriously suggest that they have gone to Beijing to kowtow to the supreme leader of North Korea? The event has attracted important regional neighbours that Australia cannot afford to ignore.

Bob Carr has written about why he is in Beijing on the Sydney Morning Herald.

Plugging our ears and refusing to understand the perspective of others isn’t going to make Australia safer, and engagement doesn’t equal submission. The sooner this becomes common sense, the sooner we can have mature public debate on foreign policy in Australia.

With about 40,000 troops and some of the country’s advanced weapons on display, a military parade being held in Beijing today’s is meant to showcase China’s triumph over adversity, and to bolster the ruling Communist Party’s claim as the defender of the Chinese people. In Chinese parlance, 3 September 1945 marks the “victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War”. It was the day after Japan formally surrendered to allied nations.

The date is of major significance in Chinese nationalism, akin to ANZAC Day for Australia. It marks China’s victory in a long, existential struggle against Imperial Japan. By the time Japanese warplanes bombed Darwin in 1941 and Australians felt threatened as never before, some of China’s most populous regions had been under Japanese occupation for up to a decade.

For Beijing, China’s contribution to the Allies’ victory also entitles China to leadership in the global order equal to any Western nation. Indeed, Xi is now fond of saying “Every increase of China’s strength is an increase of the prospects of world peace.” But by its own words, China is not seeking some special mandate to rule all under heaven; its declared vision is more mundane: “global governance based on consultation, joint contribution, and shared benefits”.

Whether or not you agree with these statements, it’s important to understand that these views grew out of sentiments that are strongly felt  by Chinese leadership and much of the public.

Well, without a social policy to hang their hat on, the Coalition is once again at sea. They ran out of questions on the aged care packages very early on, and their questions on that were largely regressive.

Then they tried with the Oz story on ‘Isis brides’ which seemed more of a digging exercise than anything else. Then it was the the bullshit to bring up the tractors.

Honestly.

There is a dixer for Clare O’Neil on housing and then the PM calls time.

Anne Webster gets up to say that she has been misrepresented and denies the prime minister’s implications that she helped to organise the protest/tractors or that she encouraged the protester with the noose.

And the chamber moves on.

Anne Webster comes back to her question from yesterday, because she wants to make the point about the prime minister being chased by tractors again.

Again – this is a complete double standard. This is being celebrated by the Coalition. If a pro-Palestinian protester got in a giant vehicle and chased after the prime minister’s car after an event, there would be absolute hell to pay.

Webster:

The Prime Minister told the bush summit “I won’t BS people”. The Prime Minister promised Australians a $275 reduction in their energy bills prior to the 2022 election. Hasn’t that now proven to be BS? Is this broken promise the reason why the Prime Minister was chased out of town by a convoy of tractors?

That commitment was two elections ago by the way, and was not mentioned at the last election.

Albanese:

I did attend a meeting in Ballarat last week and I attended a meeting in Wagga Wagga as well. I attend regularly regional events. When I do, I inform the members as the member for Page would know, as the member for Maranoa would know, as the member for Riverina would know and I took the member for Riverina to the event in his electorate last week. I have attended an event with the member for Mallee where I opened a local community infrastructure at the invitation of the local council.

There were schools there because it was the first time a Prime Minister had visited Horsham, a small community, in some 40 years. There were school children there, lots of people there. The member for Mallee, I rang up, invited to come along.

The member chose to organise people to come along and yell with loud hailers and to disrupt…

I … was fine with that, as I was last week when I engaged in one on one discussions but I do make this point.

Yesterday, a Neo-Nazi crashed the events with the Victorian Order, the Leader of The Premier. Nationals is going to cease interjecting.

I tell you what is dangerous – what is dangerous is encouraging and I was there, as was the member for Maranoa, he knows that the Australian Federal Police had organised a cut off area…a cut-off area so that indeed no-one was chased as the member put it in her question.

Indeed, I, because of the presence of the AFP, I attended a dinner the night before. I went around all of the tables and discussed that with farmers.

Anne Webster gets up. Milton Dick warns her against having a point of order on relevance, as Albanese is being relevant. Webster says it is on relevance. Dick makes her sit down.

Albanese:

I tell you what is dangerous, the encouragement of an event where someone stands on a chair in the second row with a noose around their neck at a time when people are taking their own life is a really serious issue.

All I would say is this – I’m always prepared to front up.

I front up in seats right across this parliament. I front up outside my electorate office which the demonstrations are a lot more willing than what was there in Ballarat the other day.

I front up when coffins are brought to the front of my office with my name on it and front up and address those people and I address them respectfully.

I say this, Mr Speaker to the parliament, you need to be responsible.

Greens MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown asks:

The international association of genocide scholars this week voted overwhelmingly in favour of a motion stating that Israel’s actions in Gaza fit the definition of genocide under international law, calling on states like Australia to uphold our obligations under the genocide convention. Will your government finally acknowledge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza?

Albanese:

I note there are processes before the ICJ and that people will have different views but, those processes are legal processes and what we do, as a responsible government, is allow legal processes to take their course. What I would say about the situation in the Middle East is my government has been consistent. We have been consistent since the terrorist atrocity that Hamas committed on October 7 in calling that out for what it was. We have been consistent in calling for the release of hostages. We have been consistent in calling for a cease fire and for innocent civilians to be protected.

I must say that the resolution that was carried with the support of the major parties in this house has stood the test of time quite well. It calls for international law to be upheld. It calls for innocent people, whether they be Israelis or Palestinians to be protected.

We have called out issues in Gaza with regard to a failure to adequately provide food and essential aid there. We have called out the double tap that occurred at the hospital in Khan Younis for what it was that saw the loss of life of journalists as well as doctors and nurses and people providing assistance there. We have continued to take a principled position that has resulted in criticism from all sides of this debate. It is the right thing to do.

It’s the right thing to do for the role that we play internationally, it’s the right thing to do to work towards a long term solution where both Israelis and Palestinians can live side-by-side in peaceful security, where Israel can continue to exist as a majority Jewish state providing a home land for the Jewish people but where the legitimate aspirations of Palestinian people for their own state can be realised. That is something that I have held throughout my political life and before I came to this parliament. That is something that our government will continue to do, will continue to be a strong advocate, regardless of criticism that is thrown at us, regardless of the misinformation which is put out there, for example we do not fund or provide arms to the state of Israel, we are not a participant in this conflict. What Australians want to see is two things – they want to see the killings stop. They want to see, whether they be Israelis or Palestinians – and the second thing they want is for the conflict to not be brought here.