Australia politics live: David Pocock rues ‘farcical’ tax review; Pauline Hanson explains stance on paid parental leave

Key events

Matt Canavan doesn’t plan to meet Roberts-Smith tonight, but doesn’t want to be ‘judge or jury or executioner’ as case moves ahead

The s leader, Matt Canavan, says he has no plans to speak to Ben Roberts-Smith at the event at the Australian War Memorial, but said he doesn’t want to be “judge or jury or executioner” and would rather let the courts move forward.

Canavan told reporters he would consider meeting with the former soldier if asked, but said he believes it’s “extremely important that we protect the principle that people are innocent until proven guilty, and Ben Roberts-Smith has not been proven guilty of any crime in the criminal issue”.

He went on:

I would say regardless of the case here … the conduct for which Ben Roberts-Smith was awarded a Victoria Cross for [will] live on … I try not to put myself in as a judge or jury or executioner for people who do put themselves at that kind of risk because I have never myself done it.

Hanson plans to ‘catch up’ with Roberts-Smith at war memorial event tonight

Pauline Hanson says she wants to “catch up” with Ben Roberts-Smith at an event at the Australian War Memorial tonight, and give him her support.

Roberts-Smith, Australia’s most decorated living soldier, is facing charges of war crimes related to his service in Afghanistan. He denies the charges and says he will fight the allegations in court.

The former SAS soldier last week successfully varied his bail to attend the opening of the Anzac Hall at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra tonight. Roberts-Smith had been invited along with all other living Victoria Cross recipients.

Hanson, who recently spoke at a rally for Roberts-Smith and whose party has published public signs backing him, was asked at a doorstop this morning in Parliament House whether it was appropriate for him to attend the visit, considering the charges against him.

Why shouldn’t he? He hasn’t been convicted. He may have been charged. He’s still innocent until he’s been proven guilty.

I’ll be going [to the launch], and I’m hoping to actually catch up and say hello to him and give him my support.

Parliament will end earlier than usual tonight, so that politicians can attend the event.

Starmer failed on energy, immigration and social cohesion, says Hastie

Liberal MP Andrew Hastie says it was a “tough watch” seeing Keir Starmer resign from Downing Street, but that the former UK prime minister failed to address issues around energy, immigration and social cohesion.

He told Sky News:

It was tough to watch a UK prime minister torn down by his own party, so soon after a massive landslide victory back in 2024 but I do think that Keir Starmer failed to address some of the big issues facing the United Kingdom, immigration, energy, and also the challenge of social cohesion, which is a big issue for a lot of people in the UK, so a tough day for him.

Asked whether the Australian Labor government is facing same issues here, Hastie rails off against the net zero emissions policy (something he’s been crusading against for a while), and says immigration remains a “red hot issue”.

Labor and the Liberal party both have now been eclipsed in the polls by One Nation, which has a higher primary vote.

Hanson says small businesses forced to pay parental leave will ‘fold’

Pauline Hanson has clarified (slightly) her remarks from the Press Club last week on paid parental leave.

There, she seemed to suggest women should not get paid by their employers while on maternity leave.

Today, the One Nation leader said again that small businesses shouldn’t have to pay for maternity leave, but that the government could continue to do so.

From 1 July, parents are entitled to 26 weeks of government funded paid parental leave at the minimum wage. It’s not compulsory for businesses to pay parental leave (though many do in order to attract staff), but they have to allow 12 months of unpaid leave.

Hanson told Sunrise:

It’s up to companies if they want to have it in their policy to give it to their workers. So there’s no way, shape or form that I am actually saying to get rid of it. I think it’s been very beneficial to women to get back into the workforce. So that was totally taken completely out of context.

There are businesses that cannot afford it. It’s OK for government, taxpayers pay for it. You put another pressure on the small businesses, pay for maternity leave, they’ll actually fold.

People looking for ‘easy answers’ to cost of living crisis, says Labor minister

The minister for aged care, Sam Rae, has also sought to distance Australia from the political turmoil in the UK, but has acknowledged some similarities between the rise of Reform UK and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.

Rae says that people are looking for “easy answers” to the cost of living crisis both in Australia and around the world. But he says that the focus should be on delivering solutions, not “driving division within our communities”.

We’ve seen inflation pressures across communities all around the world, and those cost-of-living pressures come to bite and people have been looking for some easy answers, and we see that at home … We have seen a rise in support for these populist rightwing parties around the world.

Rae also pays tribute to Keir Starmer, following his resignation as the UK prime minister, and says he made an “extraordinary public contribution”.

David Pocock won’t be joining a teal party

David Pocock, the independent ACT senator, says joining a party is not for him, after chatter resurfaced yesterday that some of the so-called teal MPs could form an alliance.

A few like Monique Ryan have already ruled themselves out, and we know the Warringah MP Zali Steggall is leading the charge.

Pocock tells RN Breakfast there’s a lot of frustration and anger among the public and people are “looking for alternatives”.

At this stage, I just don’t think it’s for me. I’m an independent senator for the ACT, and anything I do would come from the community here. There’s plenty of people who’ve asked me to do something bigger, but at this stage, I just don’t think it’s for me. And I’m really interested to see how it goes for the independents that are working on that.

CGT Senate inquiry process ‘farcical’, David Pocock says

David Pocock says he’s long been a supporter of changes to the capital gains tax discount for investment properties, but the government’s reforms came as a surprise.

He has some particularly choice words for the very short Senate inquiry process into the changes.

Speaking to ABC RN Breakfast, Pocock says he wants to see further changes for small businesses, and ensure that loopholes for wealthier people are actually closed.

The Senate inquiry was a bit farcical, you know, two days for such broad changes. I really support the intent of it, but clearly with these sorts of changes, there’s a lot of finer details that need to be looked at.

If the intent is to close the loopholes for things like trust, where we have wealthier Australians essentially not paying tax because they can use the trust system, we have to make sure that we’re actually closing them down but not creating a burden for people who aren’t rorting the system.

Albanese pays tribute to ‘friend’ Keir Starmer

Anthony Albanese has paid tribute his “friend” Keir Starmer after the British prime minister announced he would step down from the top job under pressure from his own Labour party MPs.

Albanese said Starmer, who has struggled to impose his authority despite winning power with a huge majority in 2024, should be proud of the contribution he had made to Britain and expressed gratitude for Starmer’s support on the Aukus talks.

Albanese said:

As we just reported, Ben Roberts-Smith is set to attend the official opening of the centrepiece of the revamped Australian War Memorial.

New arguments to further vary his bail are expected before court this morning after Roberts-Smith also applied to move his home address in south-east Queensland, in part because he wanted to be closer to family.

The federal parliament will adjourn early on tonight to allow MPs to attend the Anzac Hall opening.

In a speech to the event, Albanese will describe the galleries as a “sublime and powerful” addition to the war memorial.

It amounts to an act of profound respect from the nation to all who have served in our name, and all who serve now. The fighters for peace, the keepers of peace. It honours all who went and all who fell. It honours those who came home, including the many whose hearts never knew peace again. It is an act of remembrance that also acknowledges that not every conflict has been supported – and that, too, is part of our hard-won freedom.

Ben Roberts-Smith invitation to war memorial event ‘appropriate’, says Marles

Richard Marles says it’s appropriate that the accused war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith will attend the official opening for the centrepiece of the revamped Australian War Memorial.

Roberts-Smith has been invited as a Victoria Cross recipient.

The deputy PM and defence minister is on ABC News Breakfast and says all Victoria Cross recipients have been invited. He won’t comment on the charges against Roberts-Smith, saying there’s a legal process and “a presumption of innocence in this country”:

It’s appropriate that Ben Roberts-Smith be given an invite to this, as a Victoria Cross recipient.

The Victoria Cross recipients have been invited to this, which is appropriate, I’m comfortable about that. What will be opened – the Australian War Memorial, it’s an utterly fantastic extension to what is, I think, the most sacred building in our country. And we are very much looking forward to that. The prime minister will be there. It’s a very significant moment for the nation.

Marles says house prices will ‘obviously’ continue to grow

Labor is facing more questions today on reports house prices in Sydney and Melbourne could fall $100,000 over the next year as the property market cools.

Richard Marles says house prices will continue to grow in the long term, but a slow down of that growth will help younger people catch up.

Treasury modelling in the budget found that house growth would slow by about 2% in the short term compared to the previous tax settings without capital gains tax and negative gearing changes.

Marles tells the Today show:

If we look over the longer term, and people buy houses over the longer term, we will see housing prices continue to grow. What this is about, though, is trying to see a greater alignment in the growth of housing prices with the growth of wages. We do want to see housing become more affordable, see more Australians get into the housing market, see more first-time buyers, but we’ll obviously see house prices continue to grow.

‘Different circumstances’: Marles shrugs off comparison to UK turmoil

Richard Marles says that there are different circumstances between Australia and the UK, as both countries see a surge in popularity of rightwing populist parties (Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation).

Speaking to the Today show, Marles also calls Keir Starmer, who resigned overnight, a “great friend of Australia”, but doesn’t want to link the political turmoil over there to here.

Starmer also won in a landslide in 2024, but his popularity has rapidly tanked.

Marles says:

I think there are different circumstances here … Having lived through [leadership changes] in the earlier part of my career, the way politics plays out is very specific to particular parts of the world. And what we’re seeing happen with what’s playing out in Britain is obviously a matter for them.

I think one of the things that we see with events playing out overnight is how difficult public life is and all of us feel, I think for Keir Starmer, in that sense, it is.

Marles says that in Australia, One Nation and the Coalition will need each other, and that “neither of them can govern without the other.”

‘We cannot stop it from arriving’: agriculture minister says plans in place to mitigate H5N1 bird flu spread

The agriculture minister, Julie Collins, says the arrival of the H5 bird flu was “not unexpected” as it travels through migratory birds (which can’t be stopped at our borders).

Speaking to the ABC’s News Breakfast this morning, she reiterates that the virus hasn’t infiltrated the poultry system and authorities are still determining “whether or not this is widespread in Australian wildlife or whether it is just a few isolated cases”.

She says Australia has eradicated the H7 strain of the bird flu, but concedes that overseas it’s been very difficult to stop.

We’re still in the investigation stage and [I] reiterate that it’s not in poultry or agriculture systems at this point in time.

What we have learned from overseas is that we cannot prevent it from spreading and we’ve been very clear about that. We cannot stop it from arriving. It would come via migratory wildlife.

We can have preparations and plans in place to mitigate some of that.

Asked whether there are any vaccines being produced to stop the spread of this bird flu, Collins says the CSIRO is helping lead work for a vaccine. For humans the H5 is “low risk” but there are some vaccines.

Good morning

Krishani Dhanji here with you, thanks to Martin Farrer for getting us started.

There will be plenty of reaction in Canberra this morning to UK prime minister Keir Starmer’s resignation.

The deputy prime minister and defence minister, Richard Marles, has been tapped on the shoulder to do the morning media rounds today, to spruik a $2.5bn defence export deal signed with Canada yesterday. And the government will continue to be on the alert over an outbreak of bird flu in Australia, with confirmation a second bird was infected and died from the H5N1 virus.

As all of that happens, of course, the government is trying to get a deal over the line to pass its tax changes to CGT and negative gearing as well as an overhaul of the national disability insurance scheme.

It’s going to be a big one, let’s get cracking!

Revamped Australian War Memorial to be revealed tonight

The centrepiece of the revamped Australian War Memorial will officially open tonight in an event set to be attended by alleged war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith and the prime minister, Anthony Albanese.

The former SAS soldier last week successfully varied his bail conditions so he could attend the ceremony at the Anzac Hall galleries. Roberts-Smith was invited as a Victoria Cross recipient.

Roberts-Smith, 47, was arrested in April and charged with murdering or ordering the murders of five unarmed detainees while deployed in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012.

In a statement in April, Roberts-Smith said he categorically denied all allegations against him and that he had “always acted within my values, within my training and within the rules of engagement”.

Roberts-Smith is not allowed to discuss the prosecution against him or the prosecution against another alleged war criminal, Oliver Schulz, while in Canberra, under the revised bail conditions.

Janetzki says budget will ‘build Queensland’s future’

Janetzki said on Monday that he had budgeted “a record” $119.2bn for infrastructure over the next four years, including $55.9bn for roads and transport upgrades, while announcing a bus would replace a light rail project on the Gold Coast planned under Labor.

“Our first budget laid the foundation for a fresh start, and tomorrow’s budget will strengthen them because we need to build Queensland’s future,” Janetzki said yesterday.

One reason for fiscal caution: the state government’s finances have been teetering on the edge of a credit rating downgrade for more than a year.

Rating agency S&P Global last October forecast the state will owe 150% of its revenue by 2028, up from 100% in 2023, due to a historically large infrastructure spend, partly thanks to the 2032 Olympics. Janetzki responded at the time that a downgrade was “inevitable”.

He will hand down the budget this afternoon at 2pm.

Queensland treasurer to hand down his second budget today

The Queensland treasurer, David Janetzki, will hand down his second budget today, tipped to be a cautious rather than reformist plan for the state’s future.

There have been few major announcements in the lead-up to the budget, though the premier, David Crisafulli, and Janetzki promised at the weekend to introduce “no new or increased taxes” and vowed to continue funding the state’s 50c public transport fare scheme introduced under Labor’s Steven Miles.

The premier hasn’t repeated his 2025 vow of “no austerity” but it’s not expected to feature the sort of massive, unpopular cuts that cruelled the last non-Labor Queensland government, that of Campbell Newman, in a single term.

But the opposition has predicted cuts to the public service nonetheless.

The Labor leader claimed on Monday that infrastructure projects will be deferred or downgraded, such as the Coomera Connector highway project, a new road tunnel under Gympie Road in northern Brisbane, and rail projects in the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast.

“These are all projects that he promised would be funded and delivered in time for the 2032 Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic Games, and he has broken that promise,” Miles said.

Yesterday Crisafulli announced that the scrapped stage 4 of the Gold Coast light rail would be replaced by a “metro bus” route dubbed the Surfer.

NSW toll cap to lower to $50 under budget measures handed down today

The New South Wales government will lower the weekly road toll cap from $60 to $50 for one year as part of cost-of-living measures handed down today in the 2026-27 state budget.

In advance of today’s budget, the Minns government has announced that the threshold for the cap, under which drivers can claim back from the government after they spend $60 per vehicle, will be lowered to $50 for the 12 months from 6 July, a saving of $10 a week for motorists who already claim toll relief. Tolls on multiple roads managed by private operator Transurban will rise on 1 July, leaving them on average more than 4% higher since July 2025.

The NSW transport minister, John Graham, says:

Almost 950,000 toll account holders have sought and received cash back under the … $60 toll cap and by reducing the cap to $50 there will be 200,000 more joining them.

In addition, the government has confirmed the scrapping of tolling administration fees – issued by post to people without a tolling account when they drive on a toll road – will take place in July after the policy was announced in December last year, following a commitment before the March 2023 election.

The state’s treasurer, Daniel Mookhey, has told Guardian Australia this year’s budget will include public transport fare relief. The state did not follow Victoria in making fares free amid the fallout from the US and Israel’s war in Iran, despite pressure from the NSW opposition, who have also repeatedly called on the government to fund new metro rail projects.

Mookhey says this year’s budget will be about “relief, reform and discipline” after the state’s growth forecast for 2026-27 dropped from 2.5% to 1% amid rising inflation and the global oil shock. We have reporters inside the budget lockup this morning and will bring you the rest of the key announcements when the treasurer gives his speech at 12.30pm.

Welcome

Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories and then it will be Krishani Dhanji with the main action.

It’s a busy day for political types. Canberra is hurtling towards its winter break as Labor scrambles to do deals to get its major tax and NDIS reforms through the Senate.

And it’s budget day in two big states: Queensland and New South Wales. We’ll bring you all the news once the lockups end but, in the meantime, as usual, there are pre-announcements and promises to pore over: a little toll relief in Sydney, sometimes dubbed the world’s most tolled city, and a hint to expect a lot of hard hats in Queensland with an infrastructure-focused plan.