What we learned today, Wednesday 12 November
We will wrap up the live blog here for the evening. This is what made the news:
We won’t know the federal Liberal party’s final position on net zero emissions until around midday tomorrow, after the party room held a five-hour meeting on whether to dump the policy. The shadow energy minister, Dan Tehan, said the party would be guided by energy affordability and being serious on reducing emissions.
Leaks from the meeting confirm a number of senior Liberals, including Angus Taylor, were opposed to retaining the net zero emissions by 2050 target.
The former CFMEU leader John Setka has been arrested and charged by Victoria police after allegedly sending threatening and harassing emails to a union administrator.
The NSW Libertarian MLC John Ruddick says he plans to challenge the under-16s social media ban law in the high court before the 10 December start date.
Menulog will close its Australian operations after 20 years in business.
The former independent MP Zoe Daniel’s son says his family faced threatening and abusive behaviour during the 2025 election campaign, and took aim at the Goldstein MP and the Liberal party for not publicly condemning the threats.
The NSW government announced a $130m investment to add at least 200 crisis accommodation beds across the state for those in critical need of safe shelter.
Australia’s big four banks have provided $43bn to fossil fuel companies in the last decade, with ANZ and Westpac continuing to fund further gas expansion.
Until tomorrow, enjoy your evening.
Updated
Tehan won’t say what is in energy policy paper
Going back to Dan Tehan’s press conference, the shadow energy minister said he would present a proposal paper to the Liberal frontbench meeting tomorrow – but declined to say what would be in it.
He also defended the time and process he and Sussan Ley had taken to get to this point, after criticisms from some colleagues about the drawn-out timeline.
Tehan said he would present his work to the meeting at 9am. He said it would be informed by the discussions today, but just 16 hours ahead of the big meeting, Tehan said he had to go away and finish writing it. In any case, he was not giving away any advance detail to journalists, which he said was out of respect to colleagues.
“I obviously had to wait and see what was discussed in the party room today. Right throughout this process, the one thing that I’ve been very, very careful about and always wanted to do is to make sure that I’ve respected my colleagues,” Tehan said.
“We’ve had incredible engagement and can I say today, once again, there were a lot of people who stood up and said how much they appreciated the engagement that had taken place, and especially the Liberal party meeting today, to be able to flesh out these issues. And I’m going to continue to respect that because that’s what the party room deserves.”
Updated
