Politics live: Amnesty Australia decries ‘international embarrassment’ after NSW turns UN inspectors away from prisons | Australia news
Amnesty Australia decries ‘international embarrassment’ after NSW turns UN inspectors away from prisons
Amnesty International has criticised Australia over its failure to legislate the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture after UN inspectors were turned away from NSW prisons:
Amnesty International Australia’s impact director Tim O’Connor said in a statement:
This is an international embarrassment and shows how paper-thin the commitment to Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture [OPCAT] is.
Even though this important international treaty was ratified in 2017, it has never been passed into domestic law, and the result is that we have grave concerns about conditions of detention in this country.
We need only look at the horrific experiences of young people in youth detention, allegations of systemic abuse, the continued use of tools of torture like spithoods and the hundreds of First Nations people who have died in custody to see that there are serious problems that require independent scrutiny.
And of course, the continued detention of refugees and asylum seekers has ruined the physical and mental health of thousands of people who have done nothing more than ask for our protection because they can’t be safe in their own homes.
If the States and Territories are complying with their obligations under OPCAT then they have nothing whatsoever to fear from the Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture [SPT] visiting their prisons and detention facilities. Preventing the SPT from doing its job raises grave concerns about the conditions of people in detention in Australia.
It also highlights the urgent need for a Federal Human Rights act to provide robust safeguards for the human rights of all in this country.
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Chinese state media denounces closer security ties between Australia and Japan
Daniel Hurst
Chinese state media have denounced closer security ties between Australia and Japan as being driven by a “harsh and prejudicial judgment” of Beijing’s intentions in the region.
After the two countries promised to consider joint responses to regional crises, the China Daily said in a relatively muted editorial that the move was at odds with prime minister Anthony Albanese’s “generally” positive steps “to correct his predecessor’s wrongs”:
It is not China’s ‘assertiveness’, but the United States’ ambition to contain China’s rise with the aid of its allies that has caused the ‘deteriorating security outlook for their region’.
The Global Times, meanwhile, ran a news article quoting China-based analysts as claiming Japan and Australia had proven a willingness to be “US pawns” and arguing that any attempts to suppress China’s rise were “doomed to fail”.
The comments come after Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, and Albanese signed a new security declaration on Saturday “to meet growing risks to our shared values and mutual strategic interests”.
The declaration said that over the next ten years, Australia and Japan would work together more closely to deter “aggression and behaviour that undermines international rules and norms”. The key phrase in the document is:
We will consult each other on contingencies that may affect our sovereignty and regional security interests, and consider measures in response.
It doesn’t explicitly commit the countries to respond to a military crisis – such as in Taiwan or in the South or East China seas – as it is not a security treaty, but the declaration appears to be a clear statement of intent on how Japan and Australia are drawing closer together. Japan and Australia are also expected to step up the sharing of intelligence and strategic assessments about China’s intentions.
China’s president, Xi Jinping, told the 20th Communist party congress last week that he would never rule out the use of force to take Taiwan – a self-governed democracy of 24 million people.
Seems like the Nationals have found their subject – Bridget McKenzie will be holding a press conference very soon.
Littleproud says Labor has ‘turned its back’ on regional Australia and budget is ‘all about’ Daniel Andrews
David Littleproud is not happy with Labor’s decision to change up the Building Better Regions Fund – and he blames the Victorian election:
“Labor needs to tell our hard working regional and rural communities why it’s putting its city mates before regional and rural Australia,” Littleproud said.
“It is incredibly hypocritical of Labor to accuse The Nationals of pork-barrelling when we already know this Budget is all about helping the re-election campaign of Victorian Premier Dan Andrews.
“It’s hardly startling that most of the money for a regional program went to Nationals-held seats. It’s a regional fund and we are the party that represents regional Australia.
“Families are facing a cost-of-living crisis and taking money out of our regional and rural areas will ultimately hurt each and every Australian.”
He said prior to the election, the Nationals secured $21 billion in new funding for regional community facilities, healthcare, water infrastructure, roads, education and training.
Now many projects face the chopping block, including regional veterans’ and families’ hubs, Littleproud said.
“We need regional and rural infrastructure to get produce from the paddock to a port, to pay the bills for this nation and improve our communities.
“Labor has turned its back on regional and rural families and workers. Common sense tells you to take that away and punish regional and rural Australia means the entire economy is poorer for it.
“This is all a smokescreen to rip the guts out of regional and rural Australia and to put it into the Dan Andrews re-election campaign.”
It’s unusually quiet in the build-up to the budget
This may be the quietest budget eve (in the political sense) I can remember covering.
Things are very muted. I’ll let you know what we know is in the budget so far in just a moment, but it is a very strange day
Amnesty Australia decries ‘international embarrassment’ after NSW turns UN inspectors away from prisons
Amnesty International has criticised Australia over its failure to legislate the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture after UN inspectors were turned away from NSW prisons:
Amnesty International Australia’s impact director Tim O’Connor said in a statement:
This is an international embarrassment and shows how paper-thin the commitment to Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture [OPCAT] is.
Even though this important international treaty was ratified in 2017, it has never been passed into domestic law, and the result is that we have grave concerns about conditions of detention in this country.
We need only look at the horrific experiences of young people in youth detention, allegations of systemic abuse, the continued use of tools of torture like spithoods and the hundreds of First Nations people who have died in custody to see that there are serious problems that require independent scrutiny.
And of course, the continued detention of refugees and asylum seekers has ruined the physical and mental health of thousands of people who have done nothing more than ask for our protection because they can’t be safe in their own homes.
If the States and Territories are complying with their obligations under OPCAT then they have nothing whatsoever to fear from the Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture [SPT] visiting their prisons and detention facilities. Preventing the SPT from doing its job raises grave concerns about the conditions of people in detention in Australia.
It also highlights the urgent need for a Federal Human Rights act to provide robust safeguards for the human rights of all in this country.
Labor still committed to lowering power bills in long term
Labor had promised to lower power bills by $275 by 2025.
Does the assistant treasurer Stephen Jones think that will still happen? He told Laura Jayes on Sky News:
Look, obviously the war in Ukraine is pushing the price of energy up all around the world. So all of the inputs into our electricity generation, coal and gas, in fact, all the non-renewable inputs, solar and wind and geothermal still going cracker jacks. But all of those fossil fuel inputs and prices have gone through the roof and that’s having an impact on energy prices, no doubt about it.
We’re still committed to our policy because we know that that’s the only way that we can bring prices down over time. … We’ve got the war in Ukraine and not enough generation capacity in the Australian grid and problems with the distribution. We’ve got a plan to deal with that. We’ll have more to say about that tomorrow night.
But it’s about rewiring the nation and creating long-term stable energy policy. Something that Angus Taylor probably has contributed more to in this parliament than anyone else, and that is the destruction of sensible energy policy. Nobody has done more to destroy energy policy and drive prices up in this parliament than Angus Taylor. We’ll be turning that around. We’ve already put the building blocks in place to do that.
Taylor says Coalition achieved ‘remarkable’ economic outcomes
Q: Are there any changes the Morrison government could have made, in hindsight?
Angus Taylor says yes and also no but kinda maybe, but no:
When you look back at the Covid era, there’s always things that you look at and say, you know, could we have done it better? But I tell you, overall, when you look at the aggregate outcome, it was remarkable. I mean, we have an economy that is performing better than almost any economy in the world. It’s an absolutely extraordinary outcome.
We’ve got a budget that has delivered a $50bn increase in revenues – much of which is because Australians are working harder and they got out of the pandemic back in October when New South Wales and Victoria came out of the lockdowns, came out of that and we came out of that swinging. You know, in incredible health.
So, you know, the overall outcome here was right. Are there individual things that could have been better? We’ll debate that for years to come. I’m sure we will. And that’s appropriate.
He does not want to go into what those “individual things” that could have been better are.
Labor ‘running up the white flag’ on economy, Angus Taylor says
The shadow treasurer Angus Taylor has said Labor is “running up the white flag” on the economy:
Well, you know, when Labor was in opposition, they took the position that governments needed to take responsibility for the economic outcomes and that was completely understandable that governments do.
We did during the pandemic and in fact we saw coming out of the pandemic 3.9% growth. A remarkable … Australia absolutely top of the charts in terms of how we performed versus the rest of the world economically. Unemployment rates at levels we haven’t seen for decades. Absolutely remarkable outcomes.
But Labor when it comes to their budget is unwilling, is unwilling to take responsibility. They said they were going to be a government that took responsibility. I’m not seeing taking responsibility at all. I’m seeing from the from the treasurer doom, gloom forecasting and commentary but responsibility? No.
Paul Karp
Nationals accuse Labor of having ‘vendetta’ against regional Australia
The Nationals’ shadow infrastructure minister, Bridget McKenzie, has accused the Albanese government of pursuing a “vendetta” against rural and regional Australia through Tuesday’s budget.
McKenzie told reporters in Canberra:
I’ve been really disappointed and I guess found it quite offensive … the way the Labor party has framed up this budget, as any spending out in rural and regional communities as waste.
That’s simply not the case. It’s to overcome social and economic disadvantage to not only improve the outcomes and economic situation of rural regional communities … [but] actually driving productivity gains and economic gains for our entire nation.
When you look at the total budget spend, the amount of savings they’ve found in these sorts of programs is miniscule and really does nothing to fix the structural issues with the budget long-term. It’s incredibly disappointing that programs like Building Better Regions Fund, [and] the regionalisation agenda … have been canned and it’s because the Labor party absolutely has a vendetta against the regions.
Of particular concern is the future of the Rockhampton ring road, which the Nationals noted that Anthony Albanese had committed to in January 2019 as Bill Shorten’s shadow infrastructure minister.
Other projects the Nationals fear could be cut include:
Labor scraps Coalition-era regional grants programs and creates new ‘transparent’ ones
Sarah Martin
The Albanese government will scrap two Coalition grants programs to set up two new regional programs worth $1bn over the next three years.
Ahead of Tuesday’s budget, the infrastructure minister Catherine King has announced the government will not proceed with future rounds of the Building Better Regions Fund and the Community Development Grants program, both of which have come under fire for political pork-barrelling.
King said the new programs would invest in community infrastructure in a way that was “transparent, fairer and more sustainable.”
A new Growing Regions Program will be made available to regional local councils and not-for-profit organisations through an annual open, competitive grants process, while a separate Precincts and Partnerships Program will be set up for larger projects in regional Australia.
King said in a statement:
While Coalition MPs are cynically attempting to claim election promises as funded projects, the Government is delivering improvements the Australian people voted for by cleaning up the chaotic mess the previous government left behind.
The Government will consult on the guidelines to ensure best practice transparency and consistency of process, as well as fairer distribution of funds to ensure people can have confidence in the new programs.
King criticised Nationals MPs for their handling of the Building Better Regions Fund, which was found by the national audit office to have favoured National party electorates.
She said MPs had told some applicants their projects would be going ahead, but this was not the case, and in other instances had handed out funds to people who had never applied and didn’t know they had got the money.
She said the Community Development Grants program had started out as an election fund, but had become a grants program that community organisations had no ability to apply for.
No new projects will be funded from the CDG program, however all contracted projects will be honoured, and a further 82 projects that date back to 2016 and that are yet to be contracted will have six months to finalise negotiations before the program ends.
Labor says inflation, not wage growth, the main budget challenge
All this inflation trouble means Labor’s promise to tackle stagnant wage growth won’t eventuate for some time.
The finance minister Katy Gallagher told Sky News:
You know, obviously, in the short term, we’re dealing with this … very difficult inflation challenge. And I don’t think anyone’s expecting, when you’ve got inflation running as high as it is at the moment, that your wages are going to be able to keep up with that.
I think the difference between us and the former government is they had a policy about keeping wages low. We really want to get wages moving, which is why, you know, we’ve supported the minimum wage cases, why we’re looking at how we can support those cases in aged care – the wage case there.
So we definitely want wages to get moving and we are hopeful they will once inflation tapers off. But at the moment, the biggest challenge that we’re trying to deal with in this budget is getting inflation back to more normal levels.
Adeshola Ore
Victorian opposition vows to pause EV tax and create 600 charging points
Victoria’s opposition has vowed to pause the state’s controversial electric vehicles tax and inject $50m to create 600 charging points if it wins next month’s state election.
The opposition leader, Matthew Guy, made the pre-election pledge on Monday morning.
In July, the federal attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, joined a legal challenge in the high court to veto Victoria’s electric vehicle tax, setting up a showdown between the commonwealth and state governments over who controls revenue from the vehicles.
Dreyfus was supporting two Victorian motorists who argue the imposition of a tax of 2.1-2.6 cents per kilometre by the Victorian government was unconstitutional because the state does not have the constitutional power to impose such fees.
NSW and Western Australia are also planning to implement EV road user charges from 2027 but the South Australia government scrapped its tax after it came to power in March.
Joyce says it’s on ‘Labor’s watch’ if debt tops $1 trillion
Barnaby Joyce was asked what he would like to see in the budget and he told the Seven Network:
Well, the first thing I’d say is we don’t have a trillion dollars in debt – we’re more than $100bn away from a trillion dollars in debt. So, if it goes to a trillion dollars in debt, it’s gone through on the Labor party’s watch.
What you’ll see is a typical Labor party budget where you have more expenses on the profit and loss and they’ll be taking money away from assets on the balance sheet.
Now, what we see right now with these weather events is billions and billions of litres of water that is basically flowing to sea, and we had money in the budget for dams so that we had assets on the balance sheet to make our economy stronger. Just like we would with rail, just like we would with roads. So in the future when you need more money for pensions or the NDIS or Medicare you have an asset base that’s more capable of covering those costs.
But if you take away the money from the assets and just put it on to new expenses on your profit and loss, then of course you’re not setting yourselves up in a responsible way in the future to be able to have a national business that can cover its costs. So just look forward to more expenses on the profit and loss. Here they come.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2022/oct/24/australia-politics-live-budget-jim-chalmers-cuts-savings-outlook-economy-labor-gdp Politics live: Amnesty Australia decries ‘international embarrassment’ after NSW turns UN inspectors away from prisons | Australia news
