What we learned today, Monday 4 September
And that’s where we’ll wrap up today. Thanks so much for your company. Here’s a little of what we learned:
Several Coalition MPs have opposed or stopped short of endorsing Peter Dutton’s plan for a second referendum if the October vote on the Indigenous voice is unsuccessful, while Anthony Albanese has accused the opposition leader of not listening to Aboriginal people.
The Liberal MP Zoe McKenzie has acknowledged that the Coalition’s robodebt scheme was “one of the poorest chapters” of public administration in Australian history and caused “avoidable human suffering”.
Qantas has acknowledged “it will take time to repair” its reputation in the eyes of Australians, and that allegations it was selling tickets to thousands of flights it had already cancelled came at a time when its brand had “already been hit hard on several fronts”.
Queensland’s acting premier says the cabinet has expressed its unanimous support for Annastacia Palaszczuk amid concerns from MPs about rushed laws that legalise the detention of children in adult watch houses.
An Australian in need of urgent medical attention has been evacuated from a remote research station in Antarctica and is now sailing hundreds of kilometres back to Hobart.
The Albanese government has introduced its next tranche of workplace reforms aimed at closing loopholes in workplace laws that allow pay and conditions to be undercut.
Labor claims it has won support to revive minimum conditions in the road transport industry and will push to make further changes to pay deal bargaining, the workplace relations minister, Tony Burke, has revealed.
Victoria’s opposition leader, John Pesutto, says he will vote no in the upcoming Indigenous voice referendum.
Reducing capital gains tax discounts and altering how we tax super could help lift more than 800,000 welfare recipients out of poverty, a new report from Australian National University and St Vincent De Paul has argued.
The Minns cabinet is expected to decide as soon as Monday whether it will spend potentially billions of dollars to keep Australia’s biggest coal-fired power station running for an extra two years to reduce the risk of blackouts.
Updated
Peter Dutton’s proposal for second referendum criticised by Liberal MPs
Several Coalition MPs have opposed or stopped short of endorsing Peter Dutton’s plan for a second referendum if the October vote on the Indigenous voice is unsuccessful, while Anthony Albanese has accused the opposition leader of not listening to Aboriginal people.
Liberal backbencher Bridget Archer said she feared the campaign against the voice risked an “erosion of trust and goodwill” in future referendums, as she and colleague Julian Leeser urged Australians to back next month’s vote on the Indigenous advisory body.
Archer told Guardian Australia:
Many no campaigners have also complained about the cost of this referendum as well, yet are advocating that they want to repeat the process.
Dutton has reiterated his preference to run an additional referendum on Indigenous constitutional recognition if the October poll fails. The Liberal leader – who first raised the idea in April when announcing his opposition to the Indigenous voice – has previously indicated he believed Australians would strongly support a vote on symbolic recognition.
Indigenous campaigners who support a voice say symbolic constitutional recognition was dismissed in the lead-up to the Uluru statement from the heart, which called for recognition via a voice to parliament. They have long criticised Dutton’s preference for symbolic recognition.
More on this story here:
Updated
