As it happened: Voice to parliament No campaign to bypass Victoria, discussion continues over Labor’s industrial relations laws

Foreign Minister Penny Wong will discuss AUKUS and work to deepen the US’s engagement in the Pacific at the AUSMIN meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin in Brisbane later this week, the minister said on Sky News this afternoon.

“In these times where there’s a lot more competition in our region, a lot more geostrategic competition, it’s very important to have ... the US deeply engaged, constructively engaged,” Wong said. “They are the indispensable power in our region.”

The talks coincide with Talisman Sabre joint exercises in the far north, involving 30,000 military personnel from 13 countries.

“This sort of defence cooperation is of course very important,” Wong said of the military exercises.

“Whether it’s defence capability or diplomatic capability, all our focus is on how do we ensure the sort of region we want to live in – which is a stable, peaceful, prosperous region – in which the sovereignty of all nations, including Australia’s, is respected. The US is a key part of enabling such a region.”

Last week, the Chief of Australia’s Air Force, Air Marshal Robert Chipman, said he was not 100 per cent confident the military could defend its northern bases if attacked.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek was asked on the ABC this afternoon why she took so long to confirm the 2024 Murray-Darling Basin Plan deadline would be missed, when she probably knew the water recovery target would be impossible to meet since stepping into her portfolio.

Here’s what Plibersek said:

I have said from the very beginning the deadlines would be difficult to meet. Of course, I hoped that coming into government we would have been able to pick up the ball that the previous government had dropped and get on with delivering the plan.

But the advice that has been made public today by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority confirms my worst fears that it is impossible in their view to meet the full water recovery targets under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan under the time allocated.

Just to give you an idea of the scale of this, when we came into government, two gigalitres out of the 450 had been delivered by the previous government. We are now at 26 gigalitres delivered or contracted towards that target.

The minister said delivering the plan in full would rely on voluntary water purchases, and that securing the extra 450 gigalitres for environmental flows was so far off target the government needed to be open to “all the possible ways of delivering it”.

“Not delivering the plan is the worst social and economic impact we can have across the basin,” Plibersek said.

One of Australia’s top barristers will seek to expand the legal definition of a political offence during a challenge to the extradition of Daniel Duggan, an Australian man accused of training Chinese military pilots overseas.

Duggan, 54, has been in custody since October last year after he was arrested at the request of the United States. An indictment in the US accuses him of training pilots when he was an instructor at a South African flight academy between 2010 and 2012.

The father-of-six has denied the allegations, telling the ABC’s 7.30 in an interview from Lithgow correctional centre: “I strenuously reject the indictment in its entirety.”

“I went as an employee with other western pilots, including other Australians, and trained civilian Chinese test pilots,” Duggan said. “Now I’m in prison, and no one else is.”

Duggan was a highly-regarded pilot with the US Marine Corps before moving to Australia, where he renounced his US citizenship and became an Australian citizen.

Read the full story.

In world news, Israel’s parliament has approved the first major law in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s contentious plan to overhaul the country’s justice system, triggering a new burst of mass protests and drawing accusations that he was pushing the country toward authoritarian rule.

The vote, passed unanimously by Netanyahu’s governing coalition after the opposition stormed out of the hall, deepened the fissures that have tested the delicate social ties that bind the country, rattled the cohesion of its powerful military and repeatedly drew concern from Israel’s closest ally, the United States.

It came just hours after Netanyahu was released from the hospital, where he had a pacemaker implanted, adding another dizzying twist to an already dramatic series of events.

As Netanyahu’s allies celebrated their victory and vowed to press ahead with more changes, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and opponents said they would challenge the new law in the Supreme Court.

“It’s a sad day,” opposition leader Yair Lapid said after the vote. “This is not a victory for the coalition. This is the destruction of Israeli democracy.”

The overhaul calls for sweeping changes aimed at curbing the powers of the judiciary, from limiting the Supreme Court’s ability to challenge parliamentary decisions to change the way judges are selected.

AP

After the prime minister was asked earlier today if a Black Summer-scale disaster is possible this year, Anthony Albanese spoke about the difficulty in predicting the severity of the bushfire season.

“I cannot answer,” he told local media in the NSW town of Ulladulla, which experienced intense fires during Black Summer. “With respect, you’re saying: what will this summer look like? With respect, I’m a politician in July. I think that people want to make sure that we prepare as best as possible.”

Although predictions are difficult, the Rural Fire Service of NSW – the state hit hardest by Black Summer with 5.5 million hectares and 2500 homes burned – have released a map showing areas of concern for this bushfire season, writes environment reporter Laura Chung.

Part of the concern is how much drier parts of NSW, particularly the west, are compared to two years ago when the state was sodden and flooding due to La Niña downpours.

Albanese said preparations included providing a national large air tanker for NSW’s firefighting fleet, implementing new fire danger ratings and carrying out hazard burns.

“The other thing [we] need to do is to take climate change seriously,” Albanese said. “We have seen potentially the two hottest days on record in Europe in recorded history this week.”

Read the full story from Laura.

Federal Health Minister Mark Butler says government research funding should be distributed using an independent peer-review process, as he mulls changes to the beleaguered $20 billion Medical Research Future Fund.

This masthead revealed last week that the fund spent more than $500 million on “ad hoc” and non-competitive grants under the Coalition government, some of which went into projects in or near marginal seats. The fund’s own bureaucrats admit it is perceived as a government slush fund.

The government launched a review of the fund last month, with one option considered being to move it out from under government control. Consultation closed earlier this month.

On Tuesday, Butler said he had long held concerns about the level of involvement of government ministers in the huge fund.

I have had a view that there was a question over the level of involvement by, essentially, ministers and ministerial officers, as well as the department.

“We do have to make sure that it has the confidence of the scientific community and taxpayers, who after all put about 1½ billion dollars in the medical research funding from a commonwealth level.

Read the full story.

A 37-year-old letter uncovered during a document swap proves mining mogul Lang Hancock told daughter Gina Rinehart the Hope Downs sites she is fighting to retain were to be shared with his late business partner’s heirs, the WA Supreme Court has been told.

Wright Prospecting’s lawyer Julie Taylor, who is spearheading a bid to retrieve billions of dollars in royalties on behalf of Hancock’s business partner Peter Wright’s descendants, tendered the letter as evidence on Tuesday.

In the letter written to Rinehart shortly after Wright’s death, unearthed by her eldest children Bianca Rinehart and John Hancock’s discovery process, Lang outlined the division of assets and stipulated his company Hancock Prospecting was to retain East Angelas, now known as Hope Downs 4, 5, and 6, jointly for the partnership.

“Lang and Mrs Rinehart knew and understood that those areas were held jointly for the partnership,” Taylor told the court.

“[Hancock Prospecting] was only entitled, at most, to a half interest in them.

“This is important to demonstrate Lang’s understanding of the partnership and, most importantly, that Mrs Rinehart has known since 1986 that the assets are held jointly by the partnership.”

Hancock Prospecting and its executive chair Gina Rinehart maintain the Hope Downs assets and their spoils belong to them, insisting they put in the work to claw them back and invest in their development after they were confiscated by the state government.

They have not had an opportunity to respond to Tuesday’s submissions.

Read the full story.

Nationals water spokesperson Perin Davey has rejected Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s claim that the $13 billion Murray-Darling Basin Plan will miss its 2024 deadline due to “deliberate sabotage” by the previous Coalition government.

In a statement, Davey said recouping water for the Murray-Darling was in the hands of the states and out of the federal government’s control, including the return of an extra 450 gigalitres in environmental flow.

Here’s what she said:

If the minister is talking about the 450 [gigalitres], it was not the Nationals who wrote in the Basin Plan that it must only be pursued if it delivers ‘positive or neutral’ social and economic outcomes.

The Liberals and Nationals just honoured the criteria written by Tony Burke in 2012 and we worked with the Basin Ministerial Council, at the time made up evenly of Labor and Coalition members, to develop the social and economic test which was then agreed in 2018.

If the 450 [gigalitres] can’t be delivered in the way Tony Burke envisaged, and was agreed to with the states then it should not be delivered. I believe he wrote the plan that way because he listened to the communities and I ask the current minister to do the same.

As the minister is aware, it is the states who are responsible for delivering key components of the Basin Plan and in government, we worked collaboratively with State Governments of all colours.

Plibersek said earlier today that the federal government is 750 gigalitres short of the 3200 gigalitre water recovery target.