Labor True Believers, Political Analysis and Satire

24/06/2026

23/06/2026

23/06/2026

WEDNESDAY MORNING NEWS ROUNDUP

1. Labor and Greens reach deal on tax reform

The Greens will support Labor’s changes to the capital gains tax and negative gearing in exchange for an extension to the NDIS inquiry.

What we know:

The deal included an amendment to stop self-managed super funds from borrowing to invest in housing as part of an exemption granted in 2011 (ABC).

Greens Leader Larissa Waters said her party will vote to see Labor's tax changes “pass the parliament this fortnight, but we will not stop fighting for renters, we will not stop fighting for young people, and for all Australians to be able to afford a roof over their heads” (The Guardian).

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has continued to oppose the bill but Labor can now pass it with the support of the Greens, despite the backlash from the business community (SMH).

The Greens negotiated that the NDIS inquiry into Labor’s plan to cut 240,000 people from the scheme be extended until at least mid-August, allowing time for more submissions (The Guardian).

Disability spokesperson for the Greens, Jordon Steele-John, secured an amendment to protect funding for support systems required to meet daily needs, such as assisted technology and home modification. The health minister will have the power to cut entire categories of funding under Labor’s legislation (The Guardian).

Independent Ombudsman Iain Anderson made a Senate submission warning the NDIS cuts risked a repeat of robodebt. He said it could have “negative impacts on the people the system is supposed to assist and a significant waste of taxpayer resources spent unravelling a system found to be unfair or unlawful” (The Canberra Times).

2. Pocock accuses Labor of secret AI copyright policy


Independent Senator David Pocock has clashed with Industry and Science Minister Tim Ayres in parliament, alleging the government was considering a copyright carve-out for AI companies.

What we know:

Pocock said a whistleblower claimed the government was secretly considering proposals to allow AI companies to train their proprietary technology with Australian copyright material, and another that would open the door to billions of dollars of data centre investment (ABC).

In Senate question time on Tuesday, Pocock questioned the government about lobbying from AI proprietors and suggested Prime Minister Anthony Albanese planned to announce a new policy as early as July 15 (The Guardian).

Ayres accused Pocock of “reckless speculation” and said the government would not undermine copyright protections but that it was in Australia’s interest to secure as much of the technology as possible, adding that it's “not this government’s view that we should just be a cork bobbing on the ocean of other people’s technology, and a customer at the long end of technology supply chains” (ABC).

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young called for a moratorium on the development and approval of new data centres until proper regulations are established, claiming they could “drain our power and water” (The Guardian).

Though former industry minister Ed Husic had pushed for guardrails on AI before his sacking in 2025, Ayres has demonstrated more openness to AI expansion (The Guardian).

3. Taylor refuses to commit to multiculturalism


Opposition Leader Angus Taylor sidestepped questions at a press conference about his views on multiculturalism, while avoiding an endorsement of One Nation’s “monoculture” policy.

Taylor was asked multiple times if the Coalition would continue to support multiculturalism or if it would follow One Nation’s calls to end it, saying he didn’t understand what was being asked. “The one thing I want all of us to share is those core Australian values,” he said (ABC).

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said Taylor was playing “footsie” with One Nation’s leader Pauline Hanson, while Labor asserted its commitment to multiculturalism (The Guardian).

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also accused the Coalition of following One Nation, adding that “our diversity as a nation is a strength” and that the nation “won't move forward if we get stuck in these cultural debates that are all aimed at dividing people” (The Canberra Times).

In an interview on Tuesday, Hanson expanded on her meaning of “monoculture” as being united under one strong culture, which she called for in her National Press Club address last week. “Japan has a monoculture, so what’s wrong with Australia having a monoculture?” she said (The Guardian).

4. Climate action case against government taken to UN


Ten people who say they have personally been affected by extreme weather are launching a case against the federal government to the UN in the first legal claim of its kind.

Titled ‘Hard Truths’, the case argues that the federal government’s support of coal and gas companies is causing climate harms that violate Australians’ rights to life, family, home and First Nations culture (NITV).

Each of the group’s members said they have been directly impacted by a climate crisis linked to the government’s support of fossil fuels. One man who is legally blind and has limited movement said he was left trapped when trying to escape floods, while others have lost their homes (The Guardian).

The case is the first time a legal claim has been taken to an international body or court since the International Court of Justice ruled in 2025 that governments could be sued for inaction on climate change (BBC).

Australia was one of the 140 countries that signed a UN resolution backing the ruling last month. The group said that if the UN committee supports their claim, the government would be obliged to consider any recommended actions, even if they would not be enforceable (The Guardian).

Meanwhile, forty people have drowned in France as Europe experiences a record-breaking heatwave (SMH).

5. Kids Helpline crisis calls on the rise


The national youth helpline released an annual report revealing 5,190 young people required crisis intervention in 2025, raising concerns of a return to Covid-19-era rates.

Kids Helpline were contacted 128,998 times last year, averaging to about 353 cases per day. Counsellors were required to contact emergency services for an average of 14 young people per day, as they were deemed at risk of immediate harm (ABC).

The report warned the trend was continuing into 2026 and Australia could return to the high rates of the Covid-19 years, with 5,829 interventions in 2021. The current rates are three times what they were in 2018, which had the lowest crisis interventions at 1,483 (ABC).

First Nations children made up 9% of calls, which is double the rate of their proportion in the Australian population. The report revealed that one in three Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children had suicidal thoughts (National Indigenous Times).

The organisation’s national service manager, Leo Hede, said Kids Helpline urgently needed funding to employ more counsellors, with the report revealing that only 58% of calls were getting through to support (ABC).

The Victorian government has rejected Kids Helpline’s request for $4.5m to support the service, despite being its second biggest user after NSW. The state government claimed it had instead invested funding into state services, while NSW, QLD and WA have already contributed funding to Kids Helpline (The Age).

23/06/2026

Sure it’s vandals. It got nothing to do with contracting the work to be done by businesses that have no experience, choosing wrong materials, driving your motorcade on it and it’s all public.

At what stage do Rinehart and Hanson admit they’re members of the Trump cult?
_________________________________________________________________

Trump spouts new theory that vandals destroyed Reflecting Pool 'in the dark of night'

(Alexander Willis, Raw Story)

President Donald Trump doubled down on his theory Tuesday that vandals were responsible for his failed Reflecting Pool renovations, suggesting that “razor blades” may have been used to create a “gash” in the pool’s bottom longer than a football field “in the dark of night.”

“The 350 foot gash, made by a very sharp knife or razors, is actually numerous slashes over a very long 350 foot length,” Trump claimed on his social media platform Truth Social.

“It was purposefully and criminally done, and somebody had to work very hard, probably in the dark of night, to create such a condition. Likewise, the small area at the bottom of the Pool was cut and powerfully lifted off the surface leaving very jagged, uneven edges.”

The $14 million restoration project has become a headache for Trump. Just days after the restoration's completion, the pool became filled with green algae and paint from the pool's bottom appeared to be peeling off. Trump has claimed that vandals were responsible for the project’s failures, and threatened would-be vandals with 10 years imprisonment on Monday.

"Six people have been arrested, and seven people have been cited, for the damage they did to our Country’s now beautiful Reflecting Pool,” Trump wrote.

“In any event, even prior to fixing those areas, the Reflecting Pool is as beautiful as it can be. We will drain some of the water, either immediately before or after the Fourth of July, to do the permanent repair.”

23/06/2026

Hanson offers whinges, and not one solution

One Nation is feeding on real pressure from population growth, housing, health and infrastructure strain, but its politics offers no serious systemic reform – only the familiar scapegoating of outsiders.

The message was clear. It was from a recent migrant from South Africa who was married to a recent migrant from Bosnia.

At a roundtable birthday party discussion, the subject of Pauline Hanson’s National Press Club speech came up. The migrant said she did not feel qualified to comment but mentioned a hospital visit with her child which cost nothing; the lack of violence; the abundance of good food at a reasonable price; and how she and her husband were on track to buy a house. In short, she wondered: “What are you whingeing about?”

It was a good question to ask Australia’s Whinger-in-Chief, Pauline Hanson.

We know what she is whingeing about, or more correctly what she is identifying as the main whinges of the people she hopes will vote for her.

That whinge is fairly straightforward: outsiders will come and take away the good things we have and make things worse for us. The fear goes back as far as when homo sapiens first came out of Africa. Bands of humans came together for the purpose of ensuring outsiders did not come and take the things that made life good for them, especially habitat or land.

As human societies became more sophisticated, the things that made life good became more than just land. They included infrastructure and services. So even in a fairly non-violent society the threat of the loss of good things in life remained real.

And the Whinger-in-Chief preys brilliantly upon this powerful human concern. It works because it has some basis in reality. Population pressure has long been a cause of environmental and economic degradation and even extinction.

Every slight inconvenience or woe in what is generally a pretty good society and economy is sheeted home to the outsiders coming in and taking what we have got. And it is not just material things but also spiritual and emotional things like a sense of belonging and a sense of permanence.

And if the Whinger-in-Chief can blow these things out of proportion and present herself as the only person with the wherewithal to prevent this potential economic and emotional loss to enough voters, her party will win a lot of seats at the next election – enough to end the 80-year, two-party dominance of Australian politics.

There are two important elements to this voter trend. The first is that One Nation does not offer any real let alone detailed solutions or prescriptions to fix the things that they are whingeing about. The second is that the voters, and indeed the media, are not demanding that One Nation set out some detailed proposals as to how these things might be fixed – particularly housing and health.

The only “solution” offered is the panacea of removing the outsiders, or not letting them in in the first place. The cruelty and illegality of that solution make it a non-solution. It is similar to the Brexit solution. That was based on the lie that the European Union and its outside bureaucrats were source of Britain’s woes. Just leave Europe and all will be well.

Not so. Brexit was catastrophic and made things worse.

Importantly, much as One Nation whinges that “the system” is not working, One Nation does not propose one systemic change that might help Australia. The system of government, which supposedly does not work, is categorised as a two-party system so the two major parties can be blamed because they are the system, when in fact they are the creatures of the system, not the system itself.

What about parts of the system that make its working dysfunctional, such as the weak laws about political donations? What about disclosure and regulation of lobbyists’ activities? What about parliamentary scrutiny of the Executive through committees – an important part of the system that can make it function better, but which One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson choses to play virtually no part?

One Nation is also silent on freedom of information laws which are critical to “the system” working in an accountable way. What about One Nation whingeing about media scrutiny and banning some journalists from access?

If One Nation is taking votes away from Labor, as the polls suggest, then that is partially the fault of Labor, not of One Nation. Labor has arguably failed on the systemic part of open, accountable, democratic government. And Labor allowed immigration numbers to blow out to such an extent that polling suggested that the great majority of people were concerned about absolute numbers. That gave fuel to One Nation’s divisive, racist, and culturally exclusivist policies.

It was obvious and pointed out by some, including me, that any post-Covid catch up in immigration numbers would play in to the hands of those who would opportunistically seize on the issue, and this is precisely what has happened. But those who called for caution and restraint in immigration numbers were branded racist when it had nothing to do with race. It was just a sane argument about population growth. High population growth puts strain on economies and people’s incomes and access to infrastructure and services. That causes resentment and sets up a platform for the likes of One Nation.

One Nation has been able to use the stresses caused by high population growth on infrastructure and health, education and child and aged care to blame outsiders for those stresses. One Nation does not have a population policy, only an immigration policy, so that it can hit emotional buttons with the tried and tested method of blaming outsiders.

But if you think of the economy and society as a bus with, say, 15 too many people on it to get up a hill, the bus will only get up the hill if 15 people get off and it would not not matter what their religion or skin colour.

The important thing for the government is whether it can get population growth down enough to relieve the pressure on infrastructure and services that is causing the discontent upon which One Nation feeds. Compared to that, few voters, other than captains of industry who want cheap labour and more customers, care about rising overall national income. Only per-capita income matters when looking at voter satisfaction.

Better to live in a country with higher per-capita income more evenly spread than a country with higher overall income less evenly spread.

In any event, Australia is doing pretty well, thank you very much. As the recent migrants from South Africa and Bosnia (nations scarred by racial and religious violence) said: “What are you whinging about?”



Article by Crispin Hull who has written for The Canberra Times for 30 years on a huge range of topics, but mainly legal and constitutional. He was Editor for seven years. He taught journalism at the University of Canberra, and is the author of ‘The High Court of Australia 1903-2003’ and ‘Canberra - Australia’s National Capital’. He is also a marine rescue skipper on the Great Barrier Reef with Marine Rescue Queensland

23/06/2026

Specialist fees are out of control. Medicare needs reform

Medical specialist fees have been rising far beyond Medicare support, leaving patients with heavy out-of-pocket costs, long public waiting lists and a health system that needs stronger public controls.

Medical specialist fees have been out of control for years. Waiting times for treatment can be up to six years.

The Minister for Health Mark Butler has drawn attention to the extraordinary increase in specialist fees, saying they are “getting out of control”. He hinted that controlling fees might be practicable and necessary.

The problem had its origin under the Coalition government when Peter Dutton was the Minister for Health. In 2014 he froze Medicare rebates. The freeze lasted for six years. That was used as the pretext for specialists and others to increase fees. The escalation of specialist fees has continued ever since. It is a system without any “guard rails”.

It is not surprising that the income of specialists has increased dramatically. Taxation statistics from 2022/23 revealed that of the top five occupations in Australia for taxable income, four were for medical specialists – surgeons, anaesthetists, internal medicine specialists and psychiatrists. They’ve been having a field day at the expense of patients and taxpayers.

These higher incomes for private specialists is also a problem for public hospitals, with specialists in public hospitals chasing higher income as private specialists.

The problem is both costs and waiting times.

Some specialist doctors such as psychiatrists and surgeons and now charging up to $1,000 upfront for the first appointment. One in two patients do not know their fee before attending their first appointment. Cataract surgery and knee replacements can leave patients $2,000 or more out of pocket, even with private health insurance.

There is also a geographic and specialist inequality. Specialists are heavily concentrated in major cities. Regional and rural patients face higher fees with the additional cost of travel to see a specialist. The National Party doesn’t seem to care as it increasingly identifies with the fossil fuel lobby.

The average out of pocket costs for non-bulk billed specialist consultation increased from $46 in 2009/10 to $126 in 2024/25 or 12 per cent per year.

Two decades ago, Medicare covered 72 per cent of specialist fees. It now covers only 52 per cent. In 2009, 60 per cent of the obstetric costs were covered by Medicare. It is now down to 39 per cent.

Fees for 90 per cent of knee replacements have doubled in the past six years from $560 to $1,080. One in 10 Australians who had a knee replacement were charged more than $5,300 dollars. For hip replacement the medium out of pocket fee was $1,240 and 10 per cent of patients were charged more than $5,500.

More than 10 per cent of Australians aged over 15 delayed seeing eye medical specialists because of cost.

Each year approximately one million people report avoiding specialists because of the cost.

Those who cannot afford private fees are left to languish on public waiting lists. It can sometimes take up to six years to see neurosurgeons. In Tasmania some people wait more than five years to see paediatric allergy and respiratory specialists. Waiting times to see an ENT specialist is more than 3.7 years for some Victorians and more than 1.7 years in Queensland.

So, what can be done?

More specialists

Australia has a shortage of doctors and specialist trainees. Increasing the number of specialists would be helpful but probably only minimal in its effect. The market is rigged.

Increase the Medicare rebate

The AMA suggest that rebates should be increased and that lower fees would result. However, doctors may not reduce fees and take the extra rebate as extra income. Increasing the rebate might be marginally helpful for many conscientious doctors, but it would still be left to doctors to charge what they chose.

Better data to help decisions about specialist fees and skills

The Coalition introduced a voluntary Medical Cost Finder website so that patients could be better informed. However, it attracted only 88 specialists after three years. Specialists did not cooperate in revealing their fees. The government has now introduced legislation to make fee disclosure mandatory. This will tell us what fees are being charged. It won’t control fees. In any event patients are often confused about specialist fees and increased information may not be very helpful.

Further, specialist fees may be regarded by some people as a measure of the quality of care. However, experience shows that older and more responsible specialists often charge less than younger, less experienced specialists. If the bill passes, the government will be able to upload billing data that’s routinely collected for Medicare claims. This would allow patients to compare out of pocket costs before they book an appointment. I suspect that the public will find this marginally helpful but confusing.

Denial of rebate if fee above negotiated cap

This would involve making eligibility for Medicare subsidies conditional on not exceeding a maximum fee. There would be a maximum fee negotiated between the government and the profession. There is precedent for this in Canada. Denial of the Medicare subsidy would of course have impact on the patient. But hopefully most specialists would appreciate that he/she must conform to a reasonable fee or the patient will suffer.

Set fees

Australian governments have been reluctant to set medical fees because of concern that it would be contrary to section 51(xxiiiA) of the constitution that the Commonwealth has power to make laws providing for “medical and dental services but not so as to authorise any form of civil conscription”. The intention was that the Commonwealth government could not direct doctors to work in various parts of the country, but the power has been interpreted more widely to include the regulation of fees. But some lawyers suggest that setting fees is not civil conscription. Hopefully Minister Butler will test this issue. He has said the government is willing to “test the boundaries” of constitutional limits.

The AMA might decide to challenge in the courts the setting of such fees. But in doing so they would have little public support. Most people are aware of fee gouging by many specialists.

It might be possible for the Commonwealth government to get the cooperation of some or all states to legislate for capping or setting of medical fees. That would avoid the constitutional issue. It might also be possible for the Commonwealth to impose an income tax surcharge on specialists who choose not to comply with the caps or set fees.

Fund specialists in public hospitals

Additional funding could be directed initially to areas of high demand such as cardiology, dermatology and psychiatry. Professor Graham Stuart, a leading physician and highly published medical researcher, has suggested the Commonwealth should take over 100 per cent funding of all public hospital outpatient services. This was recommended in the 2009 report of the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission. He warned that simply giving extra funds to the state health bureaucracy to expand outpatient services would be a recipe for failure. He suggested that there must be a new model of authority, shared between state and commonwealth managers and medical specialists. He added that here are many young specialists who would be pleased to give back to the institution that trained them by staffing public clinics and performing daily procedures. Action to reduce fees charged by private specialists would also encourage more specialists to return to work in public hospitals.

Too often Medicare is viewed as a funding device for the way that health services are currently delivered. That needs a radical rethink. Health services in many instances would be more efficient and more effective if the government considered how health services could be better delivered through public hospitals and public clinics.

Are there still democratic socialists in the Labor Government?

Article by John Menadue is the Founder of Pearls and Irritations and a board member. He was formerly the Editor-in-Chief. John was the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.