Last night, Labor and the Coalition voted together to pass the Defence Housing Australia Amendment Bill 2025 through the Senate, with the Greens and Fatima Payman voting against. 

The bill allows the Australian Government to expand Defence Housing Australia, a 100% government-owned agency that buys land, builds houses and rents them to defence force personnel, to do so for American and British forces here as part of the AUKUS agreement.  

In a housing crisis, you might think that the government’s efforts to expand housing would focus on ending negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount, tax breaks that attract investors and drive up the cost of homes. The combination of those two incentives has ensured house prices rose twice as fast as incomes since the turn of the century, and they keep going up. 

Instead, at a time when two thirds of Australians want a parliamentary inquiry into AUKUS, it’s public homes for submariners but not for Australians. 

While Opposition and Greens amendments were voted down, Jacqui Lambie successfully added on a call for the Government to prioritise ADF personnel, ensure that the housing is paid for by the US and UK governments, and improve the transparency of Defence Housing Australia.  

AUKUS has swallowed whole areas of Australian public policy, including defence, education, and foreign affairs, and housing is the latest victim.  

So Swiss Post have also announced that they will pause shipping to the US because of confusion over the tariffs. This won’t be the last postal service to take this decision (Australia Post made its own suspension announcement this morning)

So far we haven’t heard anything from Don Farrell about the pause in sending goods to the US, which seems like a mistake given the amount of small businesses who do send their products to the US.

No one in government will admit this, but there is a hesitancy to criticise the US, or even speak about what is happening, because one – Australia is still trying to work out its own tariff deal with the US and two, Aukus looms over everything.

Which – think about it. If we can’t criticise an ally because we are worried about a strategic agreement, then our sovereignty is already threatened.

There is nothing to be gained from being this close to the US. If it is not Trump, it is Vance. How do we think that is going to work out for us?

In case you missed this report from earlier this morning (we have been up for a while), here it is again:

Let’s check back with Australia’s greatest ally and ‘freedom’ defender, via AAP:

US President Donald Trump has reiterated a long-running push for the Federal Communications Commission to revoke station licences of two major US broadcasters and charge them for using the public airwaves, as he criticised their news programming.

Trump suggested on Sunday that Disney-owned ABC and Comcast-owned NBC are biased and mostly air “bad stories” about him.

He said as a result, should, “according to many, have their licences revoked by the FCC. I would be totally in favour of that because they are so biased and untruthful.”

The FCC, an independent federal agency, issues eight-year licences to individual broadcast stations, not networks.

Disney declined to comment. Comcast did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump also suggested broadcasters should be required to pay millions of dollars in licence fees for the broadcast spectrum they use. David Sacks, who is now a White House adviser, said in October spectrum used by the networks “should be auctioned off, with the proceeds used to pay down the national debt.”

FCC Chair Brendan Carr did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but has taken a series of steps to investigate broadcasters. 

“The media industry across this country needs a course correction,” he said in July.

In July, the FCC voted 2-1 to approve the $US8.4 billion ($A12.9 billion) merger between CBS parent Paramount Global and Skydance Media after Skydance agreed to ensure CBS news and entertainment programming is free of bias and hire an ombudsman for at least two years to review complaints, a factor Carr cited in his decision to approve the deal.

Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez said the FCC was imposing “never-before-seen controls over newsroom decisions and editorial judgment, in direct violation of the First Amendment and the law”.

Soon after being designated chair by Trump in January, Carr reinstated a complaint about a CBS 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as complaints about how ABC News moderated the pre-election televised debate between then-president Joe Biden and Trump and against NBC for allowing Harris to appear on Saturday Night Live shortly before the election.

During Trump’s first term, then FCC Chair Ajit Pai rejected Trump’s repeated suggestions he go after broadcasters. 

“Under the law, the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a licence of a broadcast station based on the content,” Pai said in 2017. 

“The FCC under my leadership will stand for the First Amendment.” 

Australia Post has announced it will be pausing shipping parcels to the United States.

In a statement on its website, the postal service said the Trump administrations customs and tariffs changes had forced it to act:

Australia Post has taken this action in response to recent significant changes the US Government has made to customs and import tariff rules for parcels sent to the US. Changes include the US suspending the De Minimis exemption for inbound goods (below USD$800) and requiring the pre-payment of tariffs prior to an item’s arrival in the US.

The temporary suspension will impact Business Contract, MyPost Business and Retail customers sending goods through the postal network. Gifts under USD$100, letters and documents are unaffected by this change. This response is in-line with action taken by numerous other postal operators globally.

Australia Post is working with Zonos, an authorised US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) third-party provider, to offer a solution that will, once launched, allow services to resume for Business Contract and My Post Business customers. These customers will receive communications from Australia Post on what they need to do next to be ready for when this solution goes live.

Australia Post Executive General Manager, Parcel, Post & eCommerce Services, Gary Starr said: “Australia Post is focused on providing a reliable and competitive postal service for customers sending parcels internationally. Guidance from CBP has only recently been issued and, like more than 190 other postal providers, we’ve been working at pace to find a solution.

“We are disappointed we have had to take this action, however, due to the complex and rapidly evolving situation, a temporary partial suspension has been necessary to allow us to develop and implement a workable solution for our customers.

“Australia Post continues to work with US and Australian authorities and international postal partners to resume postal service to the US as a priority.”

The temporary partial suspension also includes postal sending to Puerto Rico, as it is under US Customs territory and has also been impacted by these tariff changes.

Postal goods sent to the US and Puerto Rico lodged on or after 26 August 2025 will not be accepted by Australia Post until further notice.

Greenpeace have responded to the news the government will be re-introducing the environmental protection laws it shelved after getting a deal with the Greens that upset the WA government and resource companies.

Glenn Walker, Head of Nature Program at Greenpeace Australia Pacific said: 

These reforms cannot merely be a big rubber stamp for the big end of town. They need to genuinely protect and restore nature in Australia for decades to come. The government cannot lose sight of what these laws were meant to do, which is to protect nature.”

Greenpeace Australia Pacific wants:

1. Stronger upfront nature protection to guide better decisions on big projects, including National Environmental Standards.
2. An independent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to enforce the laws and make decisions about controversial projects at arm’s length from politics.
3. Closing deforestation loopholes that allow for harmful industries to carry out mass bulldozing across Australia.
4. Consideration of the climate impacts on nature from coal and gas mines when assessing projects for approvals.
   

While Richard Marles is in the United States having talks about how far Australia is willing to go to protect the Aukus deal (having said that, Anthony Albanese has been making a lot of mentions of ‘sovereignty’ lately, which is not necessarily aimed at the domestic audience) here is what is happening in the ‘freedom’ loving United States, as reported by AAP:

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order requiring the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute people for burning the American flag, an activity the Supreme Court has ruled is legitimate political expression protected by the Constitution.

The order the Republican president signed on Monday in the Oval Office acknowledged the court’s 5-4 ruling in a case from Texas in 1989, but said there is still room to prosecute flag burning if it “is likely to incite imminent lawless action” or amounts to “fighting words”.

In that case, the justices ruled 5-4 that the First Amendment protects flag burning as legitimate political expression. The late Justice Antonin Scalia, the conservative icon who Trump has repeatedly praised, was in the majority.

Trump Monday said burning the US flag “incites riots at levels we’ve never seen before,” with some people “going crazy” over burning it and others expressing anger at people for burning it.

He did not offer examples.

Advocacy group The Parenthood are happy to see a senate inquiry into the safety and quality of early childhood education. The Greens established the inquiry yesterday, which will look into some of the recent controversies and breaches in safety (horrendous breaches at that) while also looking at the quality of the curriculum and care being offered.

Georgie Dent of the Parenthood said investment and innovation had not kept pace with the growth of the sector and that it was important to get right:

That gap has led to some shocking failures that have shaken parents’ trust. We cannot allow safety and quality to be left behind while the system grows.”

Right now, there are workforce shortages, childcare deserts in regional, rural and remote communities, and a funding model that simply isn’t fit-for-purpose. Parents are struggling to access the care they need — and children are missing out.”

Early childhood education and care is not a ‘nice to have’. It’s an essential service that delivers enormous benefits.”

“For children, high-quality early learning is life-changing. It sets them up for school, boosts their long-term education outcomes, and reduces their risk of unemployment or contact with the justice system. It’s one of the smartest investments we can make.”

Yesterday, David Pocock tried to demand the production of documents in the senate regarding some of the mess surrounding ANU but turns out that having a former senior member of the Coalition as your university leadership is a bonus when pesky senators start using their powers to hunt around for documents, because both parties blocked the move.

As Pocock said:

The major parties in the senate teamed up to protect one of their own and senior ANU leadership rather than representing people in the Canberra community.

This feels very much like protection of the university leadership rather than acting in the best interests of the staff and students who are crying out for support.

There is nothing in the orders for production of documents that would have interfered with any investigation by the regulator or natural justice processes.

Hundreds of people have lost their jobs as a result of the Renew ANU process and enormous harm continues to be caused to staff and students.

All I’m asking is for some more transparency from our national university.

The Chief People Officer likes to say that the ANU is ‘data-driven’ and I want to see them release that data including financial information and the results of the latest staff survey.

But don’t worry people – we have Richard Marles!