What we learned, Monday 22 May
That’s where we’ll leave the blog for today – thanks so much for joining us. Here is a wrap of the day’s biggest stories:
ABC journalists across the country have stood in solidarity with Stan Grant after he announced he would be standing down from Q+A due to receiving racist abuse.
Stella Assange told the National Press Club the life of her husband, Julian Assange, is “in the hands of the Australian government”.
When asked about the matter, Anthony Albanese said, “this issue does need to be resolved and I will continue to advocate as I continue to advocate for Australians around the world”.
The minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, has blasted opposition leader Peter Dutton for spreading “misinformation and scare campaigns” about the Indigenous voice during debate in parliament today.
Meanwhile, Cricket Australia has become the latest national sports body to endorse the voice.
Australian man Jason Bernard Kennison, who climbed Mount Everest after learning to walk again, has died on his return from the summit.
Clare Nowland, the aged care resident who was Tasered by a police officer in Cooma last week, remains in a “heavy sleep” and is comfortable, continuing to receive end-of-life care.
Communications minister Michelle Rowland has warned the “status quo isn’t good enough” on gambling advertising as the independent MP Zoe Daniel and some Labor MPs push for a ban on the ads.
The Albanese government announced it will regulate buy now, pay later schemes as credit products as cash-strapped consumers fall into debt.
Updated
In Senate Estimates, the Greens’ Barbara Pocock has been asking Labor’s Penny Wong about the government’s decision to appoint former chief of the foreign affairs department Kathryn Campbell to a special role overseeing Aukus, despite her previous role in the robodebt program.
Pocock noted that when Campbell was shuffled into her new role in June 2022 the government already had findings of the federal court that the program was unlawful.
Wong replied:
You’re saying ... there was a federal court decision that it was unlawful ... I don’t think it would be fair to say there had been an interrogation of how that illegality came about. The royal commission was intended to elicit that information. Some of the evidence has been beyond what we might have envisaged. It’s been quite substantial. I don’t want to, obviously, speculate on potential findings of the commission.
Pocock then pressed, by asking why didn’t the Albanese government simply end her employment.
Wong said the question which “used the phrase captain of the ship ...assumes the knowledge of what has subsequently been discovered in the commission”. She added that the evidence “has been – certainly beyond what I would’ve anticipated”.
As the former head of the Department of Social Services and, before that, the Department of Human Services, told the commission she accepted the scheme had been a “significant” failure of public administration.
She said she had assumed the scheme was lawful despite earlier advice raising serious questions and conceded external legal advice should have been sought: “In hindsight it was a big assumption to make.”
Campbell told the royal commission on 7 December: “I wish I had [checked the legality of the scheme] but at that stage [in 2015 when it was developed] I relied on DSS.” She said this had been “unwise”.
