With that, we’ll wrap up our live coverage for today.
Here’s a recap of the day’s main developments:
The former New South Wales Labor politicians Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald, and Obeid’s son Moses, have been sentenced to prison terms in relation to a rigged tender for a coal exploration licence.
Police believe four-year-old Cleo Smith was abducted from her tent at a West Australian campsite and have offered a $1m reward for information leading to her location.
“Covid-deniers” and “anti-vaxxers” should opt out of care in the public health system if they catch the virus as Victoria reopens, says the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association.
Scott Morrison says the declaration of funds from a blind trust for the Christian Porter defamation case will now be examined by a broader parliamentary inquiry. The prime minister’s comments come after his government voted down a Labor push to refer Porter to the privileges committee to determine whether his declaration complied with relevant disclosure rules, despite the Speaker, Tony Smith, finding there was a “prima facie case” to investigate.
Have a great evening (especially if you live in Victoria!). We’ll be back to do it all again tomorrow.
Crown Resorts shareholders have again rebelled against the casino operator after it paid millions of dollars to executives who have left the troubled company.
Nearly 31% of proxy votes were cast against the company’s remuneration report before its annual general meeting on Thursday.
It’s the second straight year that votes against have exceeded the 25% threshold needed to register a “strike” against Crown.
The two consecutive strikes opened the way for a resolution to spill the entire board, but investors overwhelmingly rejected this idea with 95% of proxies voting against it.
In the 2021 financial year Crown paid more than $20m to executives who have left the company, including $9.6m in termination payments.
The acting chair Jane Halton defended making the payments, saying they were required under “longstanding contracts”.
“Covid-deniers” and “anti-vaxxers” should opt out of care in the public health system if they catch the virus as Victoria reopens, says the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association.
The AMA Victoria president, Dr Roderick McRae, said those who do not believe Covid-19 is real or a threat should update their advanced care directives and inform their relatives that they do not wish to receive care in the public health system if diagnosed with the virus.
From Friday, many restrictions will lift across the state as it has exceeded 70% full vaccination of those aged over 16. Though Victoria is still recording high daily case numbers, with 2,232 new cases reported on Thursday, high vaccination combined with lower than predicted length of stays in hospital has given the government confidence the health system will cope with measures lifting earlier than first anticipated.
With the House adjourned and the Senate winding up, I am going to hand you over to the wonderful Elias Visontay,who will take you through the evening.
Politics live will be back on Monday, when the House meets and estimates begins – which is going to be a pretty wild week of hearings, given everything which has been going on. We hope Penny Wong’s eyebrows are ready for their workout.
For everyone in Melbourne – enjoy your Friday. None of us from outside can imagine what the last two years have been like for you and can’t pretend to try. Instead, we can just wish you all of the happy times from tomorrow as you reunite with loved ones, visit special spaces and begin whatever it is we are calling normal these days.
And for those still feeling uncertain, or concerned – we see you too. It’s not going to be an easy transition for a lot of people and the worry won’t stop, particularly for those in vulnerable groups. Take it as slow as you want.
A very big thank you to everyone who joined along with us this week as we delved back into politics live for the first time in six weeks. This project couldn’t happen without Mike Bowers, who is the heart and soul of the blog, or its originator, Katharine Murphy, who continues to guide us all from the corner of the room. The blog would be lost without the talent, brains and heart of Sarah Martin, Paul Karp and Daniel Hurst, and all the other members of the Guardian – names you see and names you don’t – who keep it running and informed.
As always though, a very big thank you to everyone who comes along to read with us. You are the reason it is all worth it – even sitting through question time – and we don’t say that lightly. Thank you for all that you bring to us every day.
The Australia Live blog will be back tomorrow, so everyone can take a break from the politics. I’ll be back early on Monday. Until then, please – take care of you.
In what looked like the worst remake of Reservoir Dogs from the worst timeline, the Nationals leadership team called a photo opportunity to show them walking to their party room meeting where they will finalise the list of demands to take to Scott Morrison in exchange for the Nationals’ support on a 2050 net zero emissions target.
But it didn’t go entirely smoothly ...
The Nationals leadership group make their way to the party room this afternoon. Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce, Nationals deputy leader David Littleproud, Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie, resources and water minister Keith Pitt and assistant minister to the deputy PM Kevin Hogan in a courtyard of Parliament House. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
Because Bridget McKenzie didn’t get the memo about which door they were walking towards.
Accidental split in the Nats. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
The Nationals are meeting now to finalise their list of demands in exchange for net zero emissions by 2050 support, which will be given to Scott Morrison.
Q: Jason, the Nationals are still holding off. We had yesterday, for instance, Bridget McKenzie saying it is going to get ugly if the prime minister goes ahead. What are you thinking as someone who has been pushing for this?
Jason Falinski:
I think that this is an incredibly difficult thing for any country to do. Australia faces some difficult tasks as well. We are a huge energy exporter, huge exporter of minerals, a huge exporter of agricultural goods.
And those three things put together in most other nations would make this task incredibly difficult.
I reject what [Andrew Giles] is saying. Most of the reduction did not occur under the Labor government (it actually did, as Adam Morton has reported several times, including here). Yes, the pandemic, which meant we had to close large part of our economy, did help last year, but we have been on a clear project to reduce our targets by 20%.
I would also argue the Labor party is refusing to tell us what they would do given they are running around saying they are expecting an election in December is an argument for them to be permanent opposition. If they want to be the alternative government ...
Q: Hang on a minute, you are the government and we have less than two weeks till Glasgow and you haven’t told us what you are going to do.
Falinski:
I know! It is exciting, isn’t it?
Q: You deserve to be in opposition by that standard.
Falinski:
We are making this exciting for everyone at home.
Q: No, it is not exciting for everyone at home because we have heard about this for too long.
Falinski:
Sure, sure, and this is a really difficult thing to do. Anyone who says otherwise and for the National party and for a lot of rural and regional Liberals who represent committees that will be added nervously or whose impact of zero by 2050 is uncertain, this is something they need to work through.
I am not sitting here saying by any stretch of the imagination that we have negotiated this, or this policy has gone in a straight line, but I am more confident at the end of this week than I have ever been that we will go to Glasgow with a commitment to a net zero emissions by 2050, and that will be extraordinary that we have managed to do that as a country and as a community and a society. What rests upon us here and now in this moment is to make sure that in that commitment that we don’t leave anyone behind. And that is what is going on at the moment in federal parliament.
Over on the ABC, Jason Falinski is asked by Patricia Karvelas: “Wouldn’t it be easier if Christian Porter came forward and revealed who made the donations? And it’s the right thing to do?”
Falinski:
The easiest thing to do isn’t often the right thing to do.
I need to make something clear; what the parliament did yesterday was not reject a recommendation by the Speaker to refer a matter to the privileges committee. What the government voted against was putting on a debate about the matter.
One reason we did that is that Christian Porter and the incident ... we are talking about has been referred to the privileges committee by Mark Dreyfus and that had occurred 24 hours previously, so I don’t want people listening to this program to think that these issues will not be investigated by the parliament or by the privileges committee because that’s not the case.
In this case of Christian Porter, and the blind trust that was used, this is very difficult and unusual circumstances, and I’m talking on the television station at which he was suing because he believed that his reputation had been damaged falsely and indirectly.
... There were people who donated to that [Porter fund] who didn’t, I believe, didn’t feel like they wanted to do so openly because they felt that they are to be subjected to retribution by some of the people involved on the other side of that case. Whether that’s fair, whether true or not, I don’t know.
But what does that have to do with anything?
One thing that we want to investigate or that Peter Dutton – and I understand Tony Burke and Anthony Albanese also are in favour of investigating this – is how public elected officials can actually defend themselves against false claims. So it’s well known that Peter Dutton is considerable amount of his own money and openly says he is in the very fortunate circumstances of being able to defend himself but he will miss that out of money against someone who made some extraordinary claims about his character, which I don’t think even the Labor party would dispute was completely out of order, but that’s one of the problems we face in this country, it’s a major one, which is that the cost of justice in this country is completely and utterly out of control ...
The House is starting its adjournment debate (the House adjourns a little earlier on Thursdays so people can catch flights), and over in the Senate a quorum was just called because it didn’t seem like there were enough government members.
A major employer group has urged Scott Morrison to pull the trigger on loosening international borders to migrant workers and students.
Australia will resume international travel for citizens, permanent residents and their families who will be able to fly in and out of Sydney without quarantine from 1 November.
But businesses continue to sound the alarm on worker shortages, with the coronavirus pandemic pushing the migration rate to its lowest in more than a century.
Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said the Delta variant and slow start to the Covid-19 vaccine rollout pushed labour issues aside.
“They are already coming back with a vengeance,” he said on Thursday.
“Unless they are addressed quickly and effectively they will hold back the recovery that is now under way.”
Willox said the Morrison government should remove the brakes it applied to NSW’s international travel plan.
“By retaining visa entry caps on categories other than returning Australians, the federal government is putting an unnecessary barrier in place,” he said.
He said all states should welcome back working visa holders, students, tourists and all other visitors as soon as possible.
“The costs of not doing so will fall squarely on their own citizens and businesses,” Willox said.
The prime minister said he did not want to see a repeat of other countries that reopened too fast.
“We’ve said on students, in particular, and on skilled migration, we’ll see that happening in New South Wales next month. We’ll start seeing that in late November, early December,” he told the Seven Network.
“On international visitors, well, we’ll see how Australians coming back first goes.”
Former NSW Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid sentenced to seven years
Anne Davies has reported on the sentencing of Eddie Obeid, Ian Macdonald and Moses Obeid:
One of NSW’s most notorious politicians, Labor powerbroker, Edward Obeid, 77, has been sentenced to seven years, while his co-conspirator, former NSW minerals minister, Ian Macdonald, 72, has been sentenced to nine years over their part in a conspiracy to gain a mining lease over the Obeid’s family farm at Bylong.
Obeid’s son, Moses Obeid, 52, has been sentenced to five years for his part in the conspiracy.
The urban infrastructure minister, Paul Fletcher, has responded to a Senate order for production of documents for spreadsheets related to the car park rorts scandal by saying he and his office haven’t seen them, or they are subject to a public interest immunity claim.
The claim is based on the fact the spreadsheets would disclose the deliberations of the cabinet, he wrote to former Senate president Scott Ryan and the rural regional affairs and transport legislation committee. Fletcher also refused to release legal advice relating to the program.
Labor’s Kristina Keneally told the Senate the government are “addicted to secrecy, allergic to accountability”.
Greens senator, Janet Rice, noted that the ANAO had revealed the existence of the document listing the top 20 marginal seats, so she questioned how the government could claim it does not exist.
Perhaps the reason they weren’t to hand is they “fell into a shredder”, she said.
Queensland was set to be reclassified as a 'very low risk' jurisdiction under WA's controlled interstate border tonight.
However, following the new case detected in Queensland today, we have now received updated health advice, and will be pausing this reclassification. pic.twitter.com/ffCH3RIdI7
WA deputy commissionerCol Blanch says the $1m reward will be offered for locating Cleo, or bringing the person/persons to account who were involved in her disappearance.
Blanch said while police had not yet located her body, her disappearance struck “at the heart of West Australians”.
“Someone knows what happened. Someone has the knowledge that will help,” he said.
“Everything that can be done is being done. Our priority is to bring Cleo home.”
“Everyone” who was at the campsite during the time of Cleo’s disappearance is a person of interest, Blanch says. There have been hundreds of Crime Stoppers calls since the four-year-old went missing:
Our job is to eliminate everyone who was at that campsite during the time [of her disappearance]... the process of any investigation is one of elimination.
[The reward] tells you we’re seeking the public’s help now. 99% of people in Australia are willing to come forward just to help. If someone’s involved or knows someone who’s involved, theres a million reasons to come forward. We’re looking for answers now.
