Wed 3 Sep
This blog is now closed.
Question: What do you think of Dan Andrews joining a line of people greeting President Xi at this parade (in China today), which includes Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un? Do you like that Dan Andrews is there?
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese:
He’s not meeting them. Like I said, the last time around, ten years ago, Minister (Michael) Ronaldson was the government’s representative.
Question: Just on comments to immigration by Sussan Ley. She says that the current levels of immigration are affecting our way of life. Do you agree with that, Prime Minister?
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese:
It’s a very broad statement. Immigration has played a role in this country over a long period of time. And with the exception of First Nations people, we are all either migrants or descendants of migrants in this country.
Professor Richard Scolyer:
I want to make a difference for people. And I’ve dedicated my life to doing that. Particularly in adulthood when I became a doctor, and that’s what I want to see. But yeah, my name to it or not – it’s not where the difference happens, it’s through learning how to do things. But being surrounded by the right team of people who know how to organise themselves to address things, and get the right answers as best you can, and that steers you in the direction that you need to go.
Albanese and Mark Butler are announcing the establishment of the Richard Scolyer Chair in Brain Cancer Research at Chris O’Brien Lifehouse.
Professor Richard Scolyer is also there.
It is the first press conference Albanese has held this week, so it will be a packed house.
Greens leader Larissa Waters says the Albanese government decision to approve the extension of Ulan thermal coal mine near Mudgee in NSW is “business as usual for Labor”
The extension would extract an extra 18.8 million tonnes of thermal coal, and extend the mine’s life to 2045. Greens leader Larissa Waters said it wasn’t only an affront to climate emissions targets, but also the environment.
Approving coal or gas in this day and age is a climate crime. Yet for Labor, it seems to be business as usual.
Labor must stop gaslighting the public – opening new coal and gas is the opposite of climate action.
It locks Australia into providing the world with more coal and gas for decades to come, while putting threatened wildlife like our precious koalas at risk.
Last week Minister Watt said he was planning to introduce new environmental laws later this year, but that he wouldn’t call them ‘Nature Positive’.
Maybe that’s because they’re going to be Coal and Gas Positive instead.”
Over in the senate, the chamber is dealing with the amendments to the aged care bill.
With the Coalition, Greens and independents all on a unity ticket to have more aged care packages released sooner (20,000 before the end of the year and another 20,000 or so before the middle of next year) the government may have to agree to move its start date forward, or face defeat on its first bill this parliament.
Independents have held a press conference calling for more attention on homelessness:
The three key asks for government from the group are:
While talking about housing, it is also important to include things like this in the conversation – see this Guardian story for what MPs own what.
All of this seems very fine. From our friends at AAP:
A US judge has handed Alphabet’s Google a key victory, ruling against US prosecutors’ bid to make the tech giant sell off its popular Chrome browser and Android operating system that was part of a larger antitrust crackdown on Big Tech, but ordering Google to share data with rivals to open up competition in online search.
Alphabet shares were up 7.8 per cent in extended trading on Tuesday as investors cheered the judge’s ruling.
While sharing data with competitors will strengthen Google’s rivals to its market-dominating advertising business, not having to sell off Chrome or Android removes a major concern for investors who view them as key pieces to Google’s overall business.
Deepak Mathivanan, an analyst for Cantor Fitzgerald, said the data-sharing requirements pose a competitive risk to Google but not right away.
“It will take a longer period of time for consumers to also embrace these new experiences,” he said.
Spokespeople for the Department of Justice and Google did not immediately reply to requests for comment on Tuesday.
The ruling was also a relief for Apple and other device and Web browser makers, whom US District Judge Amit Mehta said can continue to receive advertising revenue-sharing payments from Google for searches on their devices.
Google pays Apple $US20 billion ($A31 billion) annually, Morgan Stanley analysts said last year.
But the ruling made it easier for device makers and others who set Google search as a default to load apps created by Google’s rivals.
Google has said previously that it plans to file an appeal, which means it could take years before the company is required to act on the ruling.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai expressed concerns at trial in the case in April that the data-sharing measures sought by the Justice Department could enable Google’s rivals to reverse-engineer its technology.
However, Mehta did not order Google to share the full range of data prosecutors had requested. And even for competitors who receive the data, “mimicking Google Search would be no easy task”, he wrote.
“For starters, this remedy requires only disclosure of underlying data; it will be up to [the competitors] to engineer the technology and develop the infrastructure to make use of it,” the judge said.
The ruling results from a five-year legal battle between one of the world’s most profitable companies and its home country, the US, where Mehta ruled last year that the company holds an illegal monopoly in online search and related advertising.
At a trial in April, prosecutors argued for far-reaching remedies to restore competition and prevent Google from extending its dominance in search to artificial intelligence.
Google said the proposals would go far beyond what is legally justified and would give away its technology to competitors.
In addition to the case over search, Google is embroiled in litigation over its dominance in other markets.
The company recently said it will continue to fight a ruling requiring it to revamp its app store in a lawsuit won by “Fortnite” maker Epic Games.
And Google is scheduled to go to trial later this month to determine remedies in a separate case brought by the Justice Department where a judge found the company holds illegal monopolies in online advertising technology.
The Justice Department’s two cases against Google are part of a larger bipartisan crackdown by the U.S. on Big Tech firms, which began during President Donald Trump’s first term and includes cases against Meta Platforms, Amazon and Apple.
The Albanese Government announced yesterday that it wants to ban anonymous freedom of information requests and start charging applicants. The FOI system today is more expensive and less transparent than it was 20 years ago under the Howard Government, despite the workload being much smaller today.
So who is to blame? According to Health Minister Mark Butler,
“Many of them, we’re sure are AI bot-generated requests. They may be linked to foreign actors, foreign powers, criminal gangs … we don’t know where those requests are coming from.”
If we know anything about the Mafia, outlaw motorcycle gangs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran, it’s that they’re absolute fiends for government transparency.
When politicians are all out of ideas, they turn to national security, but this claim is particularly risible.
Freedom of information laws only force transparency about information that the public is already entitled to know. If criminal gangs and foreign actors are making FOI requests, they’ll only get information that any Australian resident would be entitled to get via their own FOI request.
I doubt there’s many crooks with the mettle to go through Australia’s byzantine freedom of information process. If they did, then they’d find it trivial to make up a fake name (who’s going to check?) or copy someone’s name and address out of the phone book.
And how shoddy are the Government’s internal processes if they’ll release something with criminal or national security implications just because an anonymous FOI request asked for it?
It is women’s health week – there was a statement in the parliament this morning and it has appeared in bits and pieces in the parliament – the assistant minister for women, Rebecca White spoke about the need for special focus on women’s health at a press conference this morning.
On women’s health -this is a great podcast on one of the most ignored areas of women’s health – peri/menopause