Australia politics live: Taylor reveals plan to block noncitizens from access to 17 benefits including paid parental leave

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Greens senator says Pauline Hanson living ‘rent-free’ in Angus Taylor’s head

Greens senator David Shoebridge said One Nation’s Pauline Hanson is living “rent-free” in Angus Taylor’s head, criticising the Coalition’s proposal to limit migration and restrict welfare payments to citizens.

Shoebridge spoke to Sky News this morning, saying Taylor’s plans would create a system of “unequal rights”. He went on:

Well, Angus Taylor clearly has Pauline Hansen living rent free in his head. Like, this is an extraordinarily, you know, I think, unprecedented move from someone who pretends they want to be the alternative government, throwing, what, hundreds of thousands of our friends and our neighbours, our workmates, people we may have worked next to for 10 or 15 years.

If they get injured, if they fall sick, saying, ‘Well, actually, we’re not going to support you’. You’ve been paying taxes into this system, into the country for maybe 10, 20, 30, 40 years.

Federal court judge finds Coles misled shoppers with ‘Down Down’ tickets that weren’t genuine

Coles misled shoppers with its “Down Down” promotional tickets, the federal court has ruled in a landmark decision for the supermarket industry.

Justice Michael O’Bryan has just handed down his judgment in the federal court in Melbourne, delivering a significant blow to Australia’s second-largest supermarket chain, which had argued the discounts represented genuine savings.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) accused Coles of misleading shoppers regarding 245 products that it sold at one regular price for at least six months which it temporarily inflated the prices of and then dropped slightly as part of a “Down Down” promotion.

The strategy is known as “was/is” comparative pricing.

The Coles trial in February, which examined 12 products in detail, heard their first price was on offer for a median period of a year, before being increased to its second price, for a median of 28 days, before being reduced to a third “Down Down” price which was actually more expensive or equal to the first price.

Delivering his judgment this morning, O’Bryan said if the average shopper had known the “Was” prices on the items’ promotional tickets had been in place for such a short amount of time, they would not have thought the discounts were genuine.

He found the supermarket giant engaged in misleading conduct, in contravention of the Australian Consumer Law.

NDIS among programs targeted by Coalition’s proposed welfare changes

Taylor’s plans to restrict welfare payments solely to citizens would include the NDIS, AAP reports.

People already on it would be grandfathered in if the proposal were ever made official.

“We have got, right now, a government that is slashing support for private health insurance for older Australians, and at the same time dishing out billions and billions of dollars to people in this country who are not citizens for welfare,” Taylor told reporters in Canberra earlier.

As we reported earlier, Taylor said the Coalition’s plans will target 17 types of welfare support.

Antisemitism present across political spectrum, inquiry told

Back to the antisemitism royal commision, where Dr Dave Rich was asked about Zionism, anti-Zionism and antisemitism. He described Zionism as:

The idea that the Jewish people are a people, that their ancient homeland is the land of Israel, that they have a right to national self-determination, and that the modern state of Israel is the manifestation of that right in the modern world.

The meaning has changed to mean support for Israel’s ongoing existence and wellbeing, he said, and is wrapped up in people’s Jewish identity. Zionism now has multiple strands, he said, and is different from supporting the Israeli government or policies.

Anti-Zionism is the idea that Israel shouldn’t exist, that it’s not a real nation, that Jewish people aren’t real, Rich told the antisemitism inquiry.

He said the slogan “from the river to the sea” (which has a contested meaning) was anti-Zionist because it meant that Israel shouldn’t exist, but that many other statements that are called anti-Zionist are really anti-Israel, against the government and its policies.

Taylor’s budget reply speech to include dramatic cuts to number allowed into the country

The opposition leader, Angus Taylor, will deliver his first budget reply speech on Thursday evening, unveiling a dramatic cut to the number of people allowed into the country, AAP reports.

Taylor in his speech will say Australia should only bring in as many people as it can house. A limit would be placed on net overseas migration, equivalent to the number of homes built in the previous year.

Tuesday’s budget forecasts the figure at 295,000 for this financial year, dropping to 225,000 by 2027/28.

That’s well below the post-pandemic high of more than 550,000, when a flood of migrants re-entered the country as borders reopened, but still higher than pre-Covid levels.

Last financial year, about 175,000 new homes were built. If Taylor’s policy were implemented, that would mean a cut to net migration of about 40% for this financial year.

Holding Jewish people responsible for Israel a ‘building block’ of racism, inquiry hears

There will always be “edge cases”, Dr Dave Rich has told the antisemitism royal commission, where there are good faith disagreements on whether something is antisemitic.

He talked about the controversial Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has been picked up by many groups, including in Australia and has been criticised for seeming to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

He said it’s a “practical tool” to identify antisemitism and people shouldn’t get hung up on it as a “definition”.

Its imprecision is its strength, he said, and people on both sides misread and over-interpret it.

The “fundamental building block of racism” was the idea of collective guilt, he said:

Holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the state of Israel is the justification provided by terrorists who murder Jews around the world, who attack Jews around the world while shouting abuse about Israel, about Gaza.

Housing minister says first home buyers should be on better footing as soon as this weekend’s auctions

Clare O’Neil, the housing minister, said the recent budget is a “housing budget” meant to help first home buyers.

O’Neil spoke to ABC News Breakfast, saying buyers hoping to the enter the property market should be on better footing nearly immediately. She said:

I’m not pretending anything is going to get fixed tomorrow or next weekend, but they will be a difference at auctions this weekend. These changes will mean that there will be just a bit fewer investors at every auction and that that younger person who is trying to get into their first home in a better position.

O’Neil said, however, the changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount were not about removing investors entirely and Australians should still be able to build wealth through the housing market:

We’re not trying to remove investors from the Australian housing market.

We want people to get ahead, and if you are doing well and you are able to do well through investing and property, then good on you. We want you to succeed and build wealth for your family.

All we are saying is that we want to make sure that when people are making those investments that they are actually helping with the biggest national challenge we face on housing, and that is building new homes for the country.

Read more here:

Taylor unveils plan to block welfare payments for noncitizens

Angus Taylor is outlining a new plan from the Coalition to block many welfare payments for noncitizens, part of the opposition’s rebuttal to the government’s budget on Tuesday.

Taylor had this to say to Sky News earlier this morning of the proposal, which is meant to curb migration figures and therefore help address the housing shortage:

Dishing out billions and billions of dollars to people in this country who are not citizens for welfare. That’s not fair on hard-working Australian citizens, that’s not fair on people who have committed to this country for many years.

The simple principle is this: if you commit to this country, we’ll commit to you. That’s the Australia I grew up in, and it’s the Australia I want to see again.

He said the plan to exclude all but citizens encompasses 17 programs, including paid parental leave, which would save the budget “many, many billions”.

And what I will say about this is that hard-working Australians out there now: I think many of them will be surprised to hear that non-citizens, as soon as they arrive here, can get access to family tax benefits.

If you are not an Australian citizen, then you don’t get the privileges of an Australian citizen. And I’d encourage people who are committed to this country to become a citizen.

Royal commission investigates how to define antisemitism

The antisemitism royal commission is off to an early start this morning, crossing to Dr Dave Rich in London. He’s the policy director at the Community Security Trust, a charity that aims to protect Jewish people from terrorism, and has written an expert report on antisemitism.

He described antisemitism as “prejudice, discrimination, hostility or hatred towards Jewish people, Jewish organisations, Jewish institutions, or people perceived to be Jewish” that can manifest in both violent and non-violent ways.

He said:

Broadly speaking, it’s built on a set of negative stereotypes, attitudes and tropes about Jews.

He also took the commissioner through the long history of antisemitism, where those tropes (he particularly mentions the trope of Jews as greedy and stingy moneylenders) developed. For a thousand years, up to a 1965 papal decree that Jews were not permanently responsible for the death of Jesus Christ, Jews were frequently accused of being Christ killers, he said.

He also talked about the blood libel myth, entirely false and “bizarre” accusations that Jewish people committed infanticide against Christian children that have continued since the Holocaust, and the “ridiculous”, fraudulent and debunked Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

A more recent trope, he said, was that Jews were modern-day Nazis, showing how antisemitism adapted after the Holocaust.

Governments must define antisemitism in order to develop policies against it, he said.

Court to rule on ACCC case against Coles

Australians who shop at Coles are about to find out whether the federal court agrees that the supermarket intended to deceive them with “illusory” and “utterly misleading” discounts on many everyday products.

The federal court justice Michael O’Bryan will hand down his judgment this morning in the case the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) brought against Coles.

The ACCC accused Coles – and rival Woolworths – of temporarily hiking prices, then putting products on “sale” on their respective promotional programs, at prices that were higher than their previous long-term shelf price.

The ACCC alleges the supermarkets misled shoppers by using their “Down Down” and “Prices Dropped” and promotions to deliberately disguise price increases on hundreds of products between 2021 and 2023.

The Coles case, heard in the federal court in Melbourne in February, focused on a sample of about a dozen products, including Rexona deodorant, Arnott’s Shapes and 2L bottles of Coca-Cola.

During the trial, Coles conceded that by the time it raised the price of an item from the original to the “was” price, the supermarket had already planned and agreed with the supplier on what the third “Down Down” price would be.

Legal counsel for the supermarket, however, argued that the promotional prices were genuine discounts offered to shoppers after an increase in wholesale costs charged by suppliers during a period of rising inflation.

O’Bryan is expected to hand down his judgment at 9.30am. We’ll bring you more updates then

Angus Taylor says Coalition will ‘fight like hell’ to oppose budget tax changes

Angus Taylor, the opposition leader, said his rebuttal to the budget later tonight will be about putting Australians first, not about countering a surge in support for One Nation.

Taylor is speaking to Channel Seven’s Sunrise this morning, saying he plans to fight “every day” until the budget legislation gets to the parliament to “stop this from happening in the first place”. He went on:

We’ll be working with small businesses, with those who are trying to save a nest egg, because they’re going to get punished under this, those trying to grow a business, for those who are trying to buy a home or get ahead owning a home.

We’re going to be working with them to fight against this rotten legislation, a toxic set of taxes that are going to hurt aspirational Aussies and are an assault on aspiration.

He said the Coalition would “absolutely” do what’s necessary to repeal the changes to the capital gains tax discount if elected.

“Frankly, we’re going to fight like hell [against] this because this is an assault on aspiration,” Taylor said.

Good morning, Nick Visser here to pick up the blog. Let’s get to it.

PM expects productivity gains from CGT reforms

Albanese also said he expected productivity gains from the capital gains tax changes, arguing the current system “distorted the market towards housing away from equities”.

Investment won’t be distorted by the way the tax system operates, he said.

He said some of the negative reaction from the investor community has not been “based upon the policy” and he committed to consulting on the change.

PM denies housing and investment changes linked to new gen Z voters

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has said that the additional 700,000 gen Z voters being added to the electoral roll by the time of the next federal election were not a factor in deciding on the negative gearing and capital gains tax changes in Tuesday’s federal budget.

Asked by Sarah Ferguson on ABC’s 7.30 about the additional voters, Albanese said he only considered the merits of the policy change.

He said:

If you concentrate on good policy, the politics will look after itself.

What we’re concentrating on here is good policy in the interest of young Australians, but also in the interest of that social cohesion. In the national interest as well.

He said the government could not “sit back and continue to watch” income from labour treated differently to income from assets.

On deciding to grandfather existing negative gearing arrangements, Albanese was asked how he would explain to a young person that the negative gearing advantages are “locked in” for older generations now.

Albanese said negative gearing is still available for new builds, and the average time negative gearing operates is a little over five years because people either dispose of the property or it becomes positively geared.

He said the government is also making sure “we don’t change the basis of people who have gone into investing in a property, on the basis of arrangements that were made available to them”.

Welcome

Good morning and welcome to our live politics blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories and then Nick Visser will take the helm (with Krishani Dhanji ready to take over this afternoon in the lead-up to tonight’s budget reply speech from Angus Taylor).

Anthony Albanese has denied that the additional 700,000 gen Z voters being added to the electoral roll by the time of the next federal election was a factor in deciding on the negative gearing and capital gains tax changes in Tuesday’s federal budget. More coming up.

Australians who shop at Coles are about to find out whether the federal court agrees that the supermarket intended to deceive them with “illusory” and “utterly misleading” discounts on many everyday products. More details coming up.