The hate crime legislation has passed the house, following the government’s decision to include mandatory sentencing. Independent MP Zoe Daniel supported the bill, but voted against the amendment to include mandatory sentencing. She explains why in this statement:

The alarming spike in antisemitism across our country is unacceptable. Goldstein is home to the third largest Jewish community in Australia – holocaust survivors and their descendants, who came to Australia for safety. This is something to be proud of. We all have a right to feel safe in our communities, and this right must be protected.

This is why I have fought for, and helped achieve, fast tracked security grants, an antisemitism envoy, and the outlawing of doxing among other measures.

Today, the Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crimes) Bill 2024 passed the House of Representatives.

I have previously called for this legislation to be progressed, and I support its passage because hate has no place in Australian society.

As this legislation came to a vote in the House of Representatives, my decision was to vote against the government’s amendment to incorporate into the Bill mandatory minimum sentences.

Community safety is paramount, and so is good policymaking. Mandatory minimum sentences do not reflect good parliamentary practice or good governance. Nor do they respect the sanctity of Australia’s constitution and separation of powers, and the importance judicial independence.

This is a principle that I have long stood for; while sentencing guidelines may sit within the law, the implementation of the punishment is a matter for the judicial branch, not the executive. Such provisions in legislation are an overreach.

This has long been Labor policy also, but under pressure from the Opposition, the government caved on its principles.

The amended legislation has now passed the House.

Chief economist Greg Jericho should still be resting after a nasty bike accident over the weekend (he is OK, but it was still a big knock so he needs time to recover) but he is an absolute glutton for punishment – so he still wrote his regular column for Guardian Australia.

You can read that here, but it expands on some things he was explaining yesterday in the blog (when he should have been resting):

The government is struggling to talk up the fact that inflation is well and truly under control. CPI rose just 2.4% on the past year. That’s right in the Goldilocks zone.

But that ignores that people don’t care too much about annual growth of prices – they care about how much prices have gone up by.

If the price of something goes up 7.5% in one year, then 3.3% in the following and is now rising at 3.0%, people will not care too much about the 3.0% because they still feel the impact of the 7.5% – and that, overall, prices over that time have gone up 12%.

This is why the opposition on Tuesday asked the prime minister how much the cost of food has risen since he took office (12%). But Albanese was also right to point out that when Labor was elected food prices were rising at 5.9% a year and are now rising just 3.0%.

So he is right, but will it convince anyone?

We are getting a rare Peter Dutton Canberra press conference.

Dutton holds press conferences but not overly often in Canberra with the press gallery. He’s more of a fan of the easy media one-on-ones and press conferences in places where he knows the media doesn’t have the same historical memory of things he has said, or where certain policies are at.

Meanwhile China is embracing the post World War II rules based order it seems, in its economic scuffle with Donald Trump’s America.

Strap in.

Also on the morning agenda was the hate crime legislation. Labor has now said it supports mandatory minimum sentences (at least one year in prison in this case) which goes against the Labor party platform, but isn’t without precedent for a Labor government (child sex offences for instance).

The Coalition have been calling for harsher penalties for months with this legislation and last night Tony Burke came back into the chamber to say Labor would be supporting an amendment to the bill which includes mandatory minimum sentencing. This hasn’t come out of nowhere and it would be unfair to say it has just been the Coalition pressure which has led to this – my spies tell me its been under discussion for sometime within caucus.

Anthony Albanese pointed to that in an interview with the Nine network this morning:

“We go through all of our proper processes on these items. Caucus approve everything that we do, we have a Caucus committee process. But we believe that the strongest action is required here. We have, as I said, we introduced this legislation last year to outlaw Nazi symbols and hate symbols as well. Things like those flags that praise, essentially, terrorist organisations. We outlawed them before that. There wasn’t any legislation, it took our Government to do so. My Government will continue to take the strongest possible action, will continue to work with the AFP, with state police agencies, with intelligence agencies to make sure – and I can confirm as well that we have now a further arrest has taken place under Operation Avalite and those arrests are continuing, whether it be by state police agencies or now the AFP through the operation that we established.“

In absolutely shocking news to anyone who hasn’t been paying attention (which includes Australia’s major parties, apparently), the IEEFA | Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis has found that the ‘golden age of gas’ has been more’s fool’s gold than anything.

IEEFA Kevin Morrison has released a report examining the last decade of Queensland’s LNG industry and found that it has “failed to live up to the hype” and has been “plagued by cost blowouts and billions in asset writedowns” where the “only ones paying more for their gas are Aussies as the exports have driven up domestic prices”.

Who would have thunk it?

Oh – everyone who has every looked at it. Including the Australia Institute which has also been trying to sound the economic alarms (as well as the climate ones) for years.

You can read some of the facts, here. Just something to keep in mind as Woodside continues their PR push at the Melbourne press club later today.

Anthony Albanese did the rounds of all media this morning, where he basically said the same thing over and over.

Here is what he said on the Seven network about the alliance with the United States:

“Well, we have an alliance with the United States. It’s a very important one. We have an important economic relationship, an important defence relationship, including through AUKUS. We engage on matters that directly affect that relationship and it’s a constructive one. They’re an important nation for us and indeed for the world.“

It’s that sort of inflexible thinking that has seen Australia follow the US into all sorts of horrors and mis-steps. But here we are.

In an earlier interview on Sky, Anthony Albanese was asked about Labor’s proposed superannuation changes and the impact they would have on people on the defined benefits scheme.

You can read about why the very modest superannuation changes (which are not moving anywhere) are a good idea, from chief economist Greg Jericho, here.

Albanese says:

“It would have an impact on it. It would mean that for a very small percentage of the population, a very small percentage indeed*, that they would make additional contributions to revenue. That is how it would impact the system. Overwhelmingly people would not be impacted. And it is a fairness measure to take into account that the superannuation system is very important, but it’s very generous at the high end and that is why we’re proposing this change. At the moment it doesn’t have support of the Parliament.“

Again – how small? About 80,000 people. That’s it. That’s the change.

A very big part of the MAGA cult, like all populist movements, is that there is not reason or rationality behind the support, but a feverish devotion to a personality. Donald Trump went to the election promising “America First” which included removing US troops from the Middle East. One of his first declarations has been he wants to send US troops into Gaza, to ‘take it’, and ‘own’ it, which is, as any reasonable person can conclude, the exact opposite of pulling troops out. But it doesn’t matter to MAGA because the policies don’t matter to MAGA – just Trump.

Peter Dutton apes that logic here:

“I think if you look at the President’s track record, there’s a lot of desire to do that deal, to get that outcome, and that people contribute to it. Part of the reason he won the election is that there are many Americans in middle America, as there are in middle Australia here at the moment, who feel ripped off by the system, who feel that, ‘well, why are we paying as American taxpayers for peace in the Middle East, or peace in Europe?’, and ‘why are we paying more at the bowser? Or why are we paying more for our insurance premiums? Or more for our mortgages? Because our Government is out spending our money that we’ve paid in taxes on causes around the world’.  

So, I think when you look at it in that context, it’s perfectly reasonable that he would try and leverage near neighbours who don’t want to take any Gazans, any Palestinians – that’s the reality of the position of many of the near neighbours – he wants them to contribute to a peaceful solution, to a rebuild. They should be the objectives of every person that we want peace and stability for Palestinians, for Israel, for the region – and that’s, I think, what he’s trying to achieve.”  

Award winning political commentator and author (and former Costello

Trump made it profitable for leaders to smear or sneer at experts, including scientists, electoral commissioners, intelligence chiefs, economists, the courts or political reporters. Dutton followed his lead.

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The worst thing about Dutton’s distraction tactics? They’re paying off

Award-winning political commentator and author (and former senior advisor to John Howard and Peter Costello) Niki Savva has again turned her insightful mind to Peter Dutton and his election strategy. In her most recent opinion piece in the Nine papers, Savva remarks on how closely Dutton is attempting to ape Donald Trump:

Dutton, again following Trump’s lead, successfully marketed himself as the strong man of Australian politics, taking that as licence to politicise every occasion – be it his Christmas Day message, Australia Day or way, way down low on whether Penny Wong and Mark Dreyfus should have represented Australia at Auschwitz.

We reached that sorry state when those arguing for a change to Australia Day risked being labelled unpatriotic or accused of loving their country less, while criticism of the Israeli government drew charges of antisemitism or indifference to atrocities committed against Jews.

It was with that in mind as we listened to the latest love-in between Dutton and his fan club, Sydney radio 2GB.

Dutton has had a long standing love affair with the talk back station, and although Ray Hadley remains his number one Stan, he is also pretty cosy on air with Ben Fordham. It was Fordham Dutton spoke today, to pay homage to Trump’s “big thinking” – in response to Trump’s illegal and immoral declaration on Gaza.

Dutton:

I think he’s serious about making sure that there’s not a threat to Israel and we can’t have another repeat of October 7 because it was the biggest attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and I think he genuinely wants to see a chance of peace, he wants to see people living not in squalor, but living in a safe environment with good housing for their children. I think he believes that there are other countries – that I think you rightly point out, I think you’ve nailed it – he wants other countries in the region to step up and take responsibility, as he’s done with NATO in Europe, asking them to spend more on their defence budgets to protect themselves, instead of always relying on the United States.  

So, what I’d say about President Trump and I think a lot of people realise this, but I think a lot are coming to grips with it as well, is he’s a big thinker and a deal maker. He’s not become the President of the United States for a second time by being anything other than shrewd. You’ve seen it in his business life, and the art of the deal is incredibly important to him, that both sides of the deal are contributing, that nobody’s ripping each other off, and I think there’s a desire for peace here from every reasonable person, and hopefully it can be achieved.