‘The world has changed between 1996 and 2024’: Albanese on Keating’s Aukus criticism
The prime minister was also asked about comments from former PM Paul Keating overnight denouncing Australia’s role in Aukus.
Anthony Albanese said Keating was entitled to express his views and told reporters:
Paul was a great prime minister, and that ended in 1996 … My job as prime minister is to do what Australia needs in 2024.
The world is different. The world has changed between 1996 and 2024. And my government is doing what we need to do today.
Key events
The prime minister said he would bring his entire ministry to Western Australia on 2 September, in a few weeks’ time.
I will be here from Sunday, here Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I will be engaging with West Australians. And if possible we will have a regional visit as well as part of that.
PM questioned over Woodside’s Browse gas project
Asked if his government is supportive of Woodside’s Browse gas project, Anthony Albanese replied:
We of course have environmental laws in place that allow for proper environmental assessment. We support the resources sector, of course subject to those environmental approvals.
Earlier this week, the multibillion-dollar gas export development off Western Australia’s north-west was deemed “unacceptable” by the state’s Environment Protection Authority due to its impact on marine life at Scott Reef.
A reporter asked Albanese about comments from the WA treasurer that job security and energy reliability “can’t be thrown out the window” in favour of environmental concerns. The PM responded:
We of course need job security. We of course need energy reliability and we need to make sure it is done in a way that protects our environment. That is the objective that I am sure we share with the Cook government here.
‘The world has changed between 1996 and 2024’: Albanese on Keating’s Aukus criticism
The prime minister was also asked about comments from former PM Paul Keating overnight denouncing Australia’s role in Aukus.
Anthony Albanese said Keating was entitled to express his views and told reporters:
Paul was a great prime minister, and that ended in 1996 … My job as prime minister is to do what Australia needs in 2024.
The world is different. The world has changed between 1996 and 2024. And my government is doing what we need to do today.
Anthony Albanese is speaking to reporters in Perth.
Echoing comments from Richard Marles earlier today, the prime minister said there were no extra political commitments under the new Aukus agreement:
“These arrangements are very clear … We are very pleased that Aukus, both pillar one and pillar two, has been agreed,” Albanese said.
It’s something that we’ve worked very carefully and closely on the detail, it will produce circumstances whereby we’ll have a whole range of jobs created here in WA and in South Australia in particular.
Guard charged with sexually assaulting female prisoner
A corrections officer stands accused of sexually assaulting a female inmate at a regional NSW prison, AAP reports.
The 36-year-old man was charged with three counts of aggravated sexual assault and one count of engaging in a relationship with an inmate, causing a safety risk, police said.
He was arrested yesterday morning by detectives from NSW police’s corrective services investigation unit, which set up a strike force to investigate claims a 28-year-old inmate had been sexually assaulted.
The assaults allegedly happened at a correctional centre at Wellington in the state’s central west between 18 June and 30 July, though police did not receive a report until the start of August.
The man was taken to Wellington police station, where he was charged and refused bail to appear at Dubbo local court today.
Benita Kolovos
Pesutto and Deeming’s lawyers discuss whether evidence should be given ‘viva voce’
Also discussed at the hearing was whether John Pesutto, Moira Deeming and other witnesses should give their evidence “viva voce” – verbally in court.
Pesutto’s lawyer, Matthew Collins KC, said the witnesses were “overwhelmingly professional people, many of them politicians, of course, who like us make speeches for a living” and it could drag out the length of the trial.
Deeming’s lawyer, Sue Chrysanthou SC, suggested the MP appear before the court to provide her hurt-to-feelings evidence.
Collins said that in the defamation case of Bruce Lehrmann’s failed defamation trial against Network 10 and Lisa Wilkinson, in which he represented 10 and Chrysanthou represented Wilkinson, all evidence was given verbally:
Ms Chrysanthou and I have both been involved recently in the case involving Mr Lehrmann. In that case Justice Lee required more than just hurt feelings but actually the entirety of the evidence of the applicant and the entirety of the evidence of Ms [Brittany] Higgins to the given viva voce … and then other some parts where it was contentious with the evidence of other lay witnesses to be given.
O’Callaghan replied: “I imagine that was because there was such forensic controversy, this case is not like that.”
Collins said this case was “not in the same dimension” – though O’Callaghan said it was helpful to hear from witnesses in person:
Different dimensions but … it is more all helpful to judges to hear the conflicting evidence about those matters viva voce. Because obviously, we all know the assistance that witnesses are given quite rightly, in preparation of affidavits. Sometimes it can not assist in the exercise I’m talking about.
The issue will be further discussed at another case management hearing scheduled for 3 September.
Benita Kolovos
More from today’s Deeming v Pesutto administrative hearing
Continuing from our last post: Moira Deeming is suing John Pesutto over a series of media releases, press conferences and radio interviews he gave following an anti-trans rights rally she participated in that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis, who performed the Sieg Heil salute on the front steps of the Victorian parliament last March.
Pesutto will argue he always unequivocally said she was not a Nazi. He said Deeming had damaged her own reputation by continuing to claim he had branded her a Nazi.
Pesutto earlier settled defamation cases with other women – Angie Jones and Kelly-Jay Keen – over the comments. But his lawyer said they would still require the three weeks set down for trial beginning on 16 September.
The court heard Deeming had 21 witnesses listed to give evidence and Pesutto eight, including Matt Bach.
Moira Deeming v John Pesutto returns to court
Benita Kolovos
Former Victorian Liberal MP Matt Bach could be forced to fly back to Australia from the UK to give evidence in the defamation trial between Moira Deeming and opposition leader John Pesutto.
In a short administrative hearing today before federal court justice David O’Callaghan, Pesutto’s lawyer, Matthew Collins KC, said he would be calling Bach as a witness.
He said Bach, who shocked his colleagues when he resigned late last year to move to the UK and return to his former profession of teaching, would prefer to give his evidence via videolink.
Collins noted Dr Bach is a school teacher and said “there would be matters of seeking leave from his job and the logistical arrangements of getting into Australia and so on”. Bach was the deputy leader of the opposition in the upper house at the time Deeming was expelled from the parliamentary Liberal party.
O’Callaghan said that as a key witness it was his preference he appeared in person:
It’s highly undesirable to have witnesses appear by video because it makes our job as judges harder. That combined with the unreliability of the technology – as much as we like to imagine it is flawless, it simply isn’t.
Collins replied: “Recently we’ve had better experience with video links from the United States than we have from Adelaide.”
We’ll have more from the hearing in a moment.
Some Australians skipping work to watch Olympics – survey
One in four Australians has woken up early or stayed up late to watch this year’s Paris Olympics, according to a survey from comparison group Finder.
The survey of 1,041 respondents found that 11% are watching Aussie athletes compete while they’re at work, but some are ditching altogether – with 3% calling in sick to watch the Games.
Gen Z were the most likely to have wagged work at 7%, and a further 20% watched on their phone while at work.
Australians in NSW (41%) were the most likely to have changed their routine to prioritise watching the Olympics, followed by Victoria (36%).
Victorian legionnaires outbreak grows to 100 confirmed cases
Adeshola Ore
Victoria’s legionnaires’ disease outbreak has spread to 100 cases.
In an update today, the health department said there were 100 confirmed and 10 suspected cases. Two Victorians have died from the disease since the outbreak emerged on 26 July.
The state’s department of health this week identified a cooling tower in the city’s west as the likely source of the outbreak – Victoria’s worst in more than two decades.
Dr Clare Looker, the state’s chief health officer, said on Monday she was confident the state had passed the peak of the outbreak.
Opposition concerned at Asio’s ‘stretched’ resources amid Taylor Swift concert plot overseas
The education minister, Jason Clare, has labelled an alleged plot to launch an attack on Taylor Swift’s concert in Vienna as “terrifying”.
Clare was on Sunrise earlier this morning and said there was “more violence and more extremism around the world”, pointing to what is occurring in the UK at the moment, and said Australia was “not immune from any of that”.
It’s incumbent on all of us, whether we’re in parliament or in the media, to make sure that we’re careful with the words we use. We’ve got to work here to bring the country together, lower the temperature. Words matter.
The deputy leader of the opposition, Sussan Ley, who was also on the program, said this was “every parent’s worst nightmare” and expressed concern over comments by the Asio director general, Mike Burgess, earlier this week that resources were “stretched”.
We have to be aggressive. We have to get in front of this and we have to make sure that we resource our agencies properly. Now, Anthony Albanese was able to find $172m to promote his budget. I think it’s really important that he resources the anti-terror agencies properly.
Old firefighting hoses get new life with zoo animals
Firefighters in NSW have found a wonderful way to reuse their old hoses – as climbing ropes and hammocks for zoo animals!
Members of the Lake George district RFS brigade delivered a batch of old hoses to the National Zoo and Aquarium in Canberra this week, and wrote on X:
They’ll be put to use in animal enclosures as climbing ropes, hammocks and enrichment items. It’s always a good day when you can help out a pri-mate!
‘It’s a line but nothing more than that’: Marles on Keating saying Australia ‘51st US state’ under Aukus
Just circling back to the deputy PM Richard Marles’ earlier interview on ABC News Breakfast.
Marles was again asked to respond to comments that Paul Keating made on 7.30 last night regarding the Aukus deal.
Asked specifically about Keating’s claim Australia is becoming the “51st state of the United States” under the deal, Marles responded:
It’s a line, but it’s nothing more than that, and it’s not a fair characterisation of what we’re doing.
Marles went on to say that none of Keating’s criticism was news “in the sense that [he] made his views known very clearly about this arrangement in March of last year”.
And to be fair, he’s been consistent in his approach ever since. So that’s all we’ve seen last night.
I don’t agree with it, but I absolutely acknowledge that as a former prime minister, as a great Labor prime minister, Paul Keating has a right to express his views in the public discourse, and that’s what he’s doing. You won’t hear any criticism from me of him. That said, obviously the views that he’s expressed I happen to disagree with.
Queensland firefighter cheered by station as she heads to Olympic semi-final
The Queensland Fire Department has cheered on their firefighter Aly Bull, who will be competing in the K-2 500m Sprint Kayak semi-finals tonight at the Olympics.
The department wrote on X:
Yeah the girls, Olympic Finalists!! It has been a privilege to watch you and your team competing on the world stage once again and we know how hard you have worked to get to your third Olympics.
Aly will be running it back in the K-2 500m Sprint Kayak event tonight, tune in to the Semi Finals from 6.50pm! What an incredible achievement!
Yeah the girls, Olympic Finalists!! 🙌
It has been a privilege to watch you and your team competing on the world stage once again and we know how hard you have worked to get to your third Olympics. 💪
Aly will be running it back in the K-2 500m Sprint Kayak event tonight,… pic.twitter.com/2bJqFLGxRs— Queensland Fire Department (@QldFireDept) August 8, 2024
