Burke targets opposition over ‘fact-free’ immigration arguments
Sarah Basford Canales
Tony Burke has moved on to the topic of immigration, and in particular, how to talk about Australia’s immigration policy sensibly – an issue that has divided the opposition in recent months.
Burke told the National Press Club he is very conscious about having a debate in a civil way. However, he noted it is “impossible to have a … civil and decent argument about immigration in a fact-free way”.
The home affairs minister said he thinks “the days of dog-whistle politics are well and truly over”.
Everybody hears them. It’s no longer a dog whistle. It’s now a set of bagpipes that you can hear from the other side of the hill.
… To have the argument about total [immigration] numbers without saying where you want to cut is spin without any substance at all – the simple question of where is something that my political opponents haven’t wanted to deal with – but there is no pathway of being an alternative party of government, unless you have that conversation.
Key events
Tom McIlroy
Government names new ambassador to Japan
The foreign minister, Penny Wong, has announced plans to name Andrew Shearer as Australia’s new ambassador to Japan next year.
Shearer – a known China hawk – will take up the role after finishing his term as the director-general of the Office of National Intelligence.
Before ONI, Shearer served as cabinet secretary and national security adviser to Liberal prime ministers including Scott Morrison. He has also held senior roles at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Lowy Institute.
Shearer is expected to be succeeded by Kathy Klugman, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s international adviser, at ONI.
Klugman will be the first woman appointed to the role.
She has worked for Albanese since Labor’s 2022 election victory and was with him at the UN general assembly in New York earlier this month.
Andrew Messenger
Parliamentary committee into Queensland container recycling scheme makes corruption referrals
A report by a government-dominated parliamentary inquiry into Queensland’s container recycling scheme has made 10 referrals to the state’s corruption watchdog, alleging it was dominated by two large beverages companies.
It was tabled in parliament on Thursday.
The Labor leader, Steven Miles, then the state’s environment minister, established the scheme in 2018. It pays a rebate to people recycling cans, and has successfully increased the state’s beverage container recovery rate from 18% prior to introduction of the scheme to 67.1% this year.
But the parliamentary committee claimed that the structure he adopted for the scheme gave Coca-Cola and Lion, two of the biggest companies in the industry, too much control. Government members of the committee wrote:
Of particular concern was COEX’s [the not-for-profit organisation appointed to manage and grow the container refund scheme] commercial relationship with Circular Economy Systems, a joint venture between its two founding members, Coca-Cola and Lion. CES has received significant – and increasing – payments over the life of the scheme.
The arrangement “effectively handed monopoly control of the scheme to two of Australia’s largest beverage corporations. Those corporations dominated the board, and awarded a key contract to their own joint venture.”
LNP members of the committee said they had made 10 referrals to the Crime and Corruption Commission as a result of the inquiry.
Daisy Dumas
Search for Gus Lamont to resume tomorrow
The search for Gus Lamont has been called off for the day after extreme heat and windy conditions hampered efforts.
South Australia police said the third day of the renewed and expanded hunt for the missing four-year-old ended “with no evidence being found”. Police said on Thursday afternoon:
The search resumed in zones outside of the original search area at sunrise, but was concluded at midday because of extreme heat and windy conditions.
Search efforts will resume on Friday, with police anticipating the search will be completed in all remaining “identified zones” that day.
On Wednesday, police said more than 100 search team members, including SA Police, ADF members and SES volunteers, had been walking up to 25 kilometres a day in hot, harsh conditions.
Gus was last seen at about 5pm on Saturday 27 September, when his grandmother saw him playing on a mound of dirt at his homestead near Yunta, about 300km from Adelaide.
Gus was wearing a blue T-shirt with a yellow Minion on the front, a grey sun hat, light-grey long pants and boots.
Andrew Messenger
Queensland energy minister tables bill aimed at repealing ‘unachievable’ energy targets
Queensland’s energy minister has introduced a long-awaited bill repealing the state’s renewables targets into state parliament.
Aside from eliminating a legislated 80% by 2035 green energy target passed under the previous, Labor, government, it would also remove a ban on private ownership on new generation, which unions have said would be akin to privatisation by stealth.
The bill also eliminates a requirement for the government to report progress towards the targets and allows the state to close three bodies, Energy Industry Council, the Queensland Energy System Advisory Board and the Queensland Renewable Energy Jobs Advocate, which provide advice about renewable energy.
The bill also renames renewables energy zones established in the prior act to “regional energy hubs”.
Queensland’s treasurer and energy minister, David Janetzki, flagged the move at a media club event last week. He said the government doesn’t plan to amend a separate law mandating a 75% by 2035 emissions reduction target. He told parliament on Thursday:
Labor’s renewable energy targets were always unachievable. Repealing the targets means Queensland’s energy system will reflect a more pragmatic approach to our changing energy mix.
By properly embedding this model into the regional energy hub legislative framework, this bill will provide greater industry certainty and facilitate private sector investment into new energy infrastructure.
The bill will go to a parliamentary committee inquiry before returning to parliament for a final vote.
Melbourne’s Montague Street Bridge strikes again
In a story regular blog readers will be familiar with, another truck has found itself stuck underneath Melbourne’s notorious Montague Street Bridge.
The incident involving a taxi-box truck occurred yesterday. 7News reported the driver was uninjured and was able to quickly move their vehicle to restore traffic flow, but it nevertheless ended a 60-day streak without incidents.
You can read more about the perennial problem here:
Coalition extends condolences to AFD officer who died after training incident
The opposition leader, Sussan Ley, has sent her condolences to the family of the solider who died after an incident occurred during a training exercise. In a statement released just now she said:
The Coalition extends its deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of the Australian Army soldier who tragically passed away following a training incident near the Townsville field training area.
Our thoughts are also with the two other ADF personnel who were seriously injured, their families, and their fellow service members during this difficult time.
Incidents like this are a stark reminder of the risks our Defence personnel face, even in training, in their commitment to serve and protect our nation with pride.
…The 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (3RAR), is a tight-knit infantry unit. In times of tragedy, their strength as a community is clear.
We extend our condolences to them as they rally around one another in the face of this heartbreaking loss.
Sarah Basford Canales
Burke says about 700 Palestinians with Australian visas are still in Gaza
Tony Burke says there are around 700 Palestinians in Gaza with Australian visas who have yet to arrive in Australia.
At the National Press Club on Thursday, the home affairs minister shared a story about a video call he had with a woman hiding in a church in Gaza. She ended up staying in the church for 18 months before she arrived with her daughter in Sydney recently.
Burke was asked about Pauline Hanson’s suggestion that anyone who arrived in Australia from Gaza after 7 October 2023 should be sent back now that there’s a temporary ceasefire and a peace proposal in the works.
Burke said:
Sometimes we have people on our caseload, where we don’t know if they’re still alive, but we’ve got roughly six-to-seven hundred on our caseload. And for those individuals – and they’ve had all the [security] checks I just described effectively – they would have been here some time ago, but they haven’t been able to get out. Some of them may well start coming.
It’s also true, if the peace is successful, as happens with any conflict, some people might decide they don’t want to leave [Gaza] …
Some people, the moment they know it’s safe and the place that all their memories and parents and grandparents live, they want to go back, and they do. And that has been the story of Australia. You know, there’s no longer a potato famine [in Ireland], but I got to stay.
Sarah Basford Canales
Burke predicts Aukus will drive net overseas migration figures up
Circling back to the National Press Club: Tony Burke says Aukus will be an upwards driver of net overseas migration (Nom) but he won’t offer a “magic number” on what future Nom levels will be.
Asked what he thinks the appropriate Nom level should be going forward for Australia, Burke said it could only be partially predicted because some levers were outside of government control.
Burke said as the Aukus deal ramps up in the coming years, it will be a significant driver of Nom:
There are going to be really significant high paying jobs that a lot of Australians will move to, and we will need to make sure that the jobs they are going [from] are still backfilled.
Some of that might be done by Australians moving up a little bit, but I have no doubt there’s going to be some situation, particularly in South Australia and Western Australia, where Aukus as a driver of employment is going to create new situations. So I won’t give you a magic number. I don’t think there is a magic number.
Remains of missing Victorian woman Lucinda Miller found on third anniversary of her disappearance
Victoria police have uncovered human remains in the state’s east believed to be missing woman Lucinda Miller – exactly three years after disappeared.
Miller, 24, disappeared after taking a rideshare service from Melbourne to Neerim South in Gippsland in October 2022.
In a statement, police said the remains were discovered in bushland in Victoria’s east.
“The remains were located this morning, on the three-year anniversary of Lucinda’s disappearance,” the statement said.
Police said the death was not being treated as suspicious.
Around 60 people were involved in the search effort over the past three days, police said.
And the winner is …
We can now bring you the winner of this year’s bird of the year competition.
Voters have crowned the tawny frogmouth their bird of the year, after relegating it to second place three times in a row.
More than 310,000 votes were cast after polling opened on 6 October and the tawny led the charge from the start, despite being hotly and persistently pursued by two cockatoos: the Baudin’s black cockatoo and the ever-popular gang-gang.
A tawny frogmouth win, however, was far from guaranteed. It was voted runner-up in 2019, 2021 and 2023. It also led the vote in the final stages of the 2023 competition, only to watch the swift parrot soar past on the final day.
Read the full story here:
Accountants, ombudsman lash tax office service
Accountants are fed up with the Australian Taxation Office, saying they can’t access staff with enough knowledge of the tax system, AAP reports.
A Tax Ombudsman review into services provided by the ATO to tax agents has found increasing frustration.
Poor and inconsistent advice, insufferable wait times – including cut-off points – and poor language skills have all been cited in the relationship breakdown between agency and agents.
The tax ombudsman, Ruth Owen, said she had been “overwhelmed with strong feedback” in her review – which isn’t the first into misgivings about the ATO.
Nola Luyten ,of Queensland firm Eagle Tax and Accounting, was critical of her dealings with the ATO, saying calls landed in the laps of people with “no experience whatsoever”:
That they do a six-week course, a lot of them are contractors that read a script … they will then move you on somewhere else, and this is how you’re on the phone for two hours.
Donna Lu
Carbon emissions from extreme wildfires reached sixth highest level on record last year, report finds
The second annual state of wildfires report found 3.7m sq km – a land area larger than India – was burned by wildfires globally between March 2024 and February 2025.
The study’s coauthor, Dr Hamish Clarke of the University of Melbourne, said:
Not only is a warming planet creating more dangerous fire-prone weather conditions, but it is also influencing how vegetation grows, dries out and provides fuel for the fires to spread …
While the future looks challenging, the report emphasises that it’s not too late to act … we need to take much stronger and faster climate action, including cutting fossil fuel emissions and reducing deforestation and land clearing.
Co-author Dr Sarah Harris, of Victoria’s Country Fire Authority, said Australia saw more than 1,000 large fires that burnt 470,000ha in Western Australia, over 5m ha in central Australia and also saw two-thirds of the Grampians National Park area burned in Victoria.
Read more here:
Burke targets opposition over ‘fact-free’ immigration arguments
Sarah Basford Canales
Tony Burke has moved on to the topic of immigration, and in particular, how to talk about Australia’s immigration policy sensibly – an issue that has divided the opposition in recent months.
Burke told the National Press Club he is very conscious about having a debate in a civil way. However, he noted it is “impossible to have a … civil and decent argument about immigration in a fact-free way”.
The home affairs minister said he thinks “the days of dog-whistle politics are well and truly over”.
Everybody hears them. It’s no longer a dog whistle. It’s now a set of bagpipes that you can hear from the other side of the hill.
… To have the argument about total [immigration] numbers without saying where you want to cut is spin without any substance at all – the simple question of where is something that my political opponents haven’t wanted to deal with – but there is no pathway of being an alternative party of government, unless you have that conversation.
Burke proposes new powers for anti-money laundering agency to target crypto ATMs
Sarah Basford Canales
The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, has announced proposed new powers for Australia’s anti-money laundering security agency to target crypto ATMs.
The minister said the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (Austrac) found 85% of the funds from top users of crypto ATMs were involved in scams or potential criminality.
Speaking at the National Press Club this afternoon, Burke said:
I’m not pretending for a minute that everybody who goes in and uses a crypto ATM is a problem, but proportionately, what’s happening is a significant problem in an area which is much harder for us to trace … I want Austrac to have the power to restrict, or if it decides to prohibit, high-risk products, and be in no doubt crypto ATMs are a high-risk product.
Tony Burke, the minister for home affairs and cybersecurity, is addressing the National Press Club of Australia this lunchtime. He has described the way in which the threat environment has come to overlap:
Many areas of home affairs, we used to look at and think about back in 1997 as not being overlaying or converging in any way. We would have separate conversations about terrorism, child exploitation, cybercrime, money laundering; there may be occasional overlap, but you could have a sensible conversation on each one in isolation.
That’s no longer the threat environment in Australia. The Dural caravan investigation involved overlaying work between the Australian Federal Police, Asio, the New South Wales police and the New South Wales Crime Commission. The Adass Israel synagogue ultimately involved the intersection of a whole lot of principles that we had in general conversation not seen overlaying with each other before: characteristics we would previously associate with terrorism, with foreign interference, with community violence, with social cohesion and with organised crime. All of those converging and overlaying with each other.
Organisations, international threats like [hacking group] Scattered Spider; [we] see a merging of cyber with artificial intelligence, with child exploitation, with money laundering.
Patrick Commins
Analysts revisit forecasts as latest unemployment figures jump to highest rate since 2021
As we have reported below, the rise in the unemployment rate to 4.5% in September takes it to its highest since November 2021.
The key jobless measure has been trending fairly steadily higher since its near 50-year low of 3.4% in October 2022, and the question now: is how much higher could it go?
Analysts may need to retool their forecasts, if they believe the figures are more than a one-off.
Krishna Bhimavarapu, an economist at State Street Investment Management, believes the data release “is no blip to brush off”.
While employment levels haven’t dropped yet, the labour market has clearly changed, and we can hear the creaks.
So why has the unemployment rate lifted despite the number of employed Australians climbing by 14,900 in the month? It’s because the increase in employment was not enough to offset a surge in jobseekers.
You could see that in the numbers: there were 34,000 more unemployed people in September than in August, the ABS said.
Patrick Commins
KPMG calls for cash rate cut after rise in unemployment figures
KPMG’s chief economist, Brendan Rynne, has called out “the likelihood of further job losses by Christmas”, after the unemployment rate unexpectedly jumped to a nearly four-year high of 4.5% in September.
Rynne said the anecdotal weakness in the labour market was now being reflected in the official statistics.
The Reserve Bank at its meeting next month “should bring the cash rate down to a more accommodating level to help businesses invest and encourage households to spend, which should collectively help underpin the labour market,” he said.
The RBA’s’s economists had expected unemployment to peak at 4.3% in the second half of this year and remain steady through next year.
The lift in the unemployment rate will add to the uncertainty around the path of interest rates.
The latest numbers clash with a recent resurgence in inflationary pressures and a lift in consumption that have suggested the RBA may not deliver another cut until next year, if at all.
Harry Murphy Cruise, the head of economic research at Oxford Economics, said the central bank was “increasingly caught between a rock and a hard place” in meeting its inflation and full employment goals.
But the weakness in the job market was enough to warrant a rate cut next month, he said.
NGA to host First Nations exhibit after review clears artist collectives of accusations made in The Australian
Dee Jefferson
The National Gallery of Australia will open a major exhibition of art from the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in 2026, three years after the original exhibition was postponed after allegations of improper interference by white art assistants.
Ngura Pulka – Epic Country, featuring paintings by senior First Nations artists and collectives from the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, Coober Pedy and Tarntanya/Adelaide, will open at NGA in April 2026.
The exhibition, which was originally scheduled to open in June 2023, was postponed after The Australian aired allegations that works attributed to APY artists had been substantially made by white studio assistants, including an edited video purporting to show a young white assistant painting on a large canvas by award-winning Pitjantjatjara artist Yaritji Young as she stood watching.
The artists and art centres at the centre of the allegations denied there had been improper interference.
As a result of the allegations, the NGA postponed the exhibition and commissioned an independent review into the provenance of 28 paintings by APY artists that were to have featured in it. The South Australian and federal governments subsequently launched a joint investigation into practices at the APY Arts Centre Collective (APYACC) more broadly.
Neither investigation found evidence to substantiate the allegations of improper interference by non-Indigenous workers.
In a joint statement responding to the NGA’s report, released in August 2023, artists from the APY Art Centre Collective said the investigation had “put things right”.
“The attack on our integrity and our art has been rejected and thrown into the rubbish bin where it belongs,” the statement said.
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