Liberal frontbencher says changes to abortion law ‘not going to happen’
Karen Middleton
Liberal frontbencher Jane Hume has declared the federal Coalition has “no plan” to wind back abortion laws in Australia if it wins government, dismissing it as an issue raised by “fringe parties” in the context of the Queensland election.
“It’s not going to happen,” she has told Sky News.
Hume’s colleague and the shadow minister for Indigenous affairs, Jacinta Price, has told Nine newspapers she cannot support abortion past the first trimester, calling full-term abortion “infanticide” and elevating the issue beyond the current debates in Queensland and South Australia to the national political agenda.
But Hume said abortion was a personal matter, the responsibility of state and territory governments and not an issue on the Coalition’s reform agenda:
It’s not an issue for the federal government. In the Liberal party, it’s always been an issue of conscience, too, and rightly so. There are some deeply held views right around the country and that is fine. That’s why they call it choice.
But what I can assure you and assure your viewers and assure all voters, is that a Dutton led Coalition government has no plans, no policy and no interest in unwinding women’s reproductive rights.
Hume described it as “an issue raised by fringe parties in a state election”.
It is not an issue for federal politics and there is no plan to change or unwind women’s reproductive rights in Australia under a Coalition government.
Hume was asked for her personal view on women’s legal access to abortion, and said: “I don’t see the need to change the laws”.
Key events
Bureau of Meteorology testing tsunami warning system
The Bureau of Meteorology says it will be testing its tsunami warning system from 11am to 4pm Aedt today.
The tests will be marked as “TEST” and appear on the Bureau’s website and weather app, it said.
The Bureau is conducting routine testing today, Wednesday 23 October 2024 from 11am to 4pm AEDT for:
• Tsunami warning system
Test products will be marked as ‘TEST’ and appear for short periods of time on the Bureau’s website and BOM Weather app. pic.twitter.com/vDXYAMHkqF
— Bureau of Meteorology, Australia (@BOM_au) October 22, 2024
Melissa Davey
Queensland chief health officer ‘concerned’ about health harms of vapes
Queensland’s chief health officer, Dr John Gerrard, says he is concerned about the growing evidence of the health harms of vapes – including “damaged lungs, toxicity, seizures, poisoning and increasing evidence of adverse events on heart health”.
Addressing the Oceania tobacco control conference in Queensland being hosted by the Cancer Council, Gerrard said it is important not to forget the considerable harms to health that tobacco products, including cigarettes, continue to cause to Australians.
While there has been considerable success in reducing the smoking rate across the country in recent years, I’m concerned about the potential for the widespread sale of cheap, illicit tobacco products.
As we gather at this conference, it’s important to note that tobacco use is the cause of more preventable death and disease than any other modifiable health risk factor. We must whenever we do all we can to prevent smoking and assist current smokers to quit.
Melissa Davey
Health minister addresses conference on tobacco and vaping reforms
This morning the federal health minister, Mark Butler, addressed the Oceania tobacco control conference taking place on the Gold Coast, where he is speaking about the significant tobacco and vaping reforms introduced.
Tobacco laws, regulations, instruments, and court decisions have been combined under one piece of legislation.
“Tobacconists, vape shops and convenience stores can no longer sell vapes,” he said in a video address to conference attenders, which includes leading researchers and clinicians in tobacco and vaping control from around the world.
He said since January, more than 5m vapes had been seized at the border.
We’ve returned it to a therapeutic good, [with people] only being able to purchase a vape for smoking cessation at a pharmacy.
From October, prescriptions are no longer required to get vapes from a pharmacy. But the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia told Guardian Australia that while the society does not have exact numbers, many pharmacists are choosing not to stock them because they don’t want to provide an unregulated product to consumers.
There are also mixed reports about the availability of vapes and the effectiveness of enforcement action so far. Despite harsher penalties now being available to prosecute vape suppliers, there are concerns regulators are still too frequently using softer enforcement measures and failing to deter retailers from continuing to sell.
Since July this year, the TGA has issued 13 infringement notices totalling $244,410 against six companies for alleged offences in connection with the retail supply of vaping goods.
Adam Bandt posts in solidarity with pro-refugee protesters who were disrupted by neo-Nazis
As we reported earlier this morning, suspected neo-Nazis were pepper-sprayed by police in Melbourne after they tried to disrupt the final night of a 100-day protest in support of refugees.
The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, has commented on the situation in a post to X and said:
For 100 days a group of brave, peaceful protesters have sat outside the Department of Home Affairs calling for refugees to be given permanent visas. Last night neo-Nazis tried to disrupt them.
Solidarity with all at the encampment for their tireless advocacy these past months.
Union slams ‘false hope’ of nuclear plan and says jobs are at risk
Queensland’s sparkies have been warned of the “huge risk” to thousands of jobs in renewable energy posed by nuclear plans, AAP reports.
The Electrical Trades Union has told electricians and apprentices in a mass mailout that nuclear energy was a “radioactive pipe dream” that could not replace coal-fired power stations.
The union’s national policy director, Katie Hepworth, says the “false hope” offered by the LNP on the premise that coal-powered stations can keep running is “letting down coal communities”:
The ETU members, our maintenance workers, who work in these power stations know that they’re being held together by all the will in the world, but they know they can’t hold on forever.
There is a huge risk that if what they’re being given is a fantasy of a nuclear power station without an entire industrial plan and a renewable plan, that they’re just going to be thrown on the scrap heap again.
The union’s nuclear energy report for 2024 found nuclear reactors would be more expensive, could not be built before coal exits the electricity grid and was “simply unnecessary” given abundant renewable energy sources.
The report, authored by Dr Hepworth, found nuclear power would be the most expensive form of energy for Australia, at 1.5 to three times the cost per kilowatt hour of coal-fired electricity and four to eight times of solar.
Adeshola Ore
Woolworths and Coles front federal court amid claims of misleading discounts
Supermarket giants Woolworths and Coles have appeared in the federal court for the first time since the competition regulator launched legal action against the companies for allegedly misleading customers with fake discounts.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) sued the supermarkets last month, alleging they had breached consumer law on hundreds of common supermarket products,
Lawyers for the parties appeared in the federal court in Melbourne this morning for a case management hearing.
John Sheehan KC, acting for Coles, said his client would show that price spikes were due to a request by suppliers for a price increase and during a period of a “sudden outbreak of inflation”. He described the case as “significant for the industry as a whole.”
Cameron Moore SC, representing Woolworths, labelled the ACCC’s case “misconceived”.
Sarida McLeod, representing the regulator, responded to the supermarket’s responses, telling the court “none of this takes the ACCC by surprise”:
The conduct is still misleading.
Justice Michael O’Bryan said another case management hearing would be held at a date to be determined.
Josh Butler
Deputy Liberal leader also shoots down calls to put abortion on national agenda
The deputy Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, has also shot down Jacinta Price’s calls to put abortion on the national political agenda, saying the Liberal party has “no intention” to change federal rules on the issue.
As mentioned earlier, Price – the shadow Indigenous Australians minister – told the Nine newspapers she “cannot agree” with late-term abortions, which she claimed was “anywhere past the [first] trimester as far as I’m concerned … Full-term becomes infanticide”.
It comes as several states debate abortion issues, sparked by conservative politicians seeking to re-examine the issue. The shadow finance minister, Jane Hume, this morning gave a categorical rebuttal, saying “a Dutton led Coalition government has no plans, no policy and no interest in unwinding women’s reproductive rights.”
Ley, the deputy Liberal leader and shadow minister for women, gave a similarly blunt response to Price’s comments – twice saying the Liberals had no intention to change laws. She told Sky News:
It’s important to remember that access to abortion is a state issue, which is why you often see it debated at state level, and we have no intention to change the settings from a federal health perspective.
Obviously, individuals have their own views, and Jacinta is entitled, as a member of the National Party, to her own view, but the federal Liberals have no intention of changing the settings when it comes to this issue.
O’Neil defends government spending amid latest inflation forecasts
Today show host Karl Stefanovic grilled Clare O’Neil on whether government spending would be cut, amid forecasts showing headline inflation rising from 3% at the end of this year to 3.7% by the end of next year.
Peter Hannam had more on this earlier in the blog, here, with all the much-needed context.
O’Neil defended the government, saying inflation had “more than halved” since it came to office and that the Coalition didn’t deliver a surplus as promised while in government.
But how does she feel about going to an election without a rate cut? O’Neil responded that “it’s not about the politics” and said:
We’re in a country right now where your kids and mine, Karl, are going to face totally different housing opportunities than … our parents got and that our grandparents got, and we can’t put up with that. And that’s why you’re seeing our government and state governments do so much about this problem.
O’Neil says she is not suggesting policy shift on stamp duty
The housing minister, Clare O’Neil, made the rounds on breakfast television this morning and also spoke with the Today show about her comments that stamp duty was a “bad tax”.
O’Neil reiterated what she said to ABC earlier, saying that “it’s not a great tax” and that “pretty much every economist in the country would agree with agree with me when I say that.”
But the minister said she was not suggesting a policy shift for the states:
What I’m saying is an abject truth in this matter, and that this is not a great tax … That’s why we’re seeing some states and territories do some things to try to wind it back …
What I can tell you is that along with that, the states are doing some really big and important things about housing, massive changes in Victoria and NSW and Western Australia. So we’re all trying to do what we can here to change the housing situation up for the millions of people affected by this.
Royal tour of Australia wrapping up today
King Charles and Queen Camilla are wrapping up their Australian tour today, set to leave for Samoa at 11.05am.
Their next round of engagements will be at this year’s Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) in Samoa’s capital, Apia, the king’s first as head of the Commonwealth.
We’ll bring you more from their departure later in the morning. You can read about their final day of the Australian tour, yesterday, below:
Teen charged for allegedly displaying Nazi symbol in Sydney’s south
A teenager has been charged after alleged Nazi graffiti in Sydney’s south yesterday.
NSW police commenced an investigation after reports of offensive graffiti on driveways, gutters, and trees in the Gymea area yesterday.
Police were told a male teenager had allegedly been seen marking property along Forest Road. Officers have since arrested a 15-year-old boy, who was taken to Sutherland police station and charged with knowingly displaying a Nazi symbol without excuse.
He was refused bail to appear before a children’s court today.
Liberal frontbencher says changes to abortion law ‘not going to happen’
Karen Middleton
Liberal frontbencher Jane Hume has declared the federal Coalition has “no plan” to wind back abortion laws in Australia if it wins government, dismissing it as an issue raised by “fringe parties” in the context of the Queensland election.
“It’s not going to happen,” she has told Sky News.
Hume’s colleague and the shadow minister for Indigenous affairs, Jacinta Price, has told Nine newspapers she cannot support abortion past the first trimester, calling full-term abortion “infanticide” and elevating the issue beyond the current debates in Queensland and South Australia to the national political agenda.
But Hume said abortion was a personal matter, the responsibility of state and territory governments and not an issue on the Coalition’s reform agenda:
It’s not an issue for the federal government. In the Liberal party, it’s always been an issue of conscience, too, and rightly so. There are some deeply held views right around the country and that is fine. That’s why they call it choice.
But what I can assure you and assure your viewers and assure all voters, is that a Dutton led Coalition government has no plans, no policy and no interest in unwinding women’s reproductive rights.
Hume described it as “an issue raised by fringe parties in a state election”.
It is not an issue for federal politics and there is no plan to change or unwind women’s reproductive rights in Australia under a Coalition government.
Hume was asked for her personal view on women’s legal access to abortion, and said: “I don’t see the need to change the laws”.
