Pocock criticises lack of scrutiny for nature laws – as it happened

Independent senator David Pocock: ‘If we’re serious about protecting nature, this is the wrong direction.’ Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

7.14am GMT

What we learned today, Thursday 27 November

With that, we will wrap the blog for the evening. That’s the final sitting day of the week and the year. It was a busy one.

Here’s what made news:

• Updated emissions projections released today show Australia’s emissions are expected to fall to 48% below 2005 levels by 2035.

• Labor has struck a deal with the Greens to overhaul federal environmental protection laws on parliament’s final sitting day of the year.

• The former competition watchdog chief Graeme Samuel, who led a 2020 review of the EPBC, says the Coalition has “manoeuvred themselves into irrelevance on this matter”.

• The independent senator David Pocock says new nature laws are “being rammed through with almost no time for scrutiny” by the Senate and the government’s deal with the Greens falls short in several areas.

• Barnaby Joyce has formally announced he’ll be leaving the National party.

• The former PM Malcolm Turnbull has decried “reality denial and physics denial” within the Coalition on climate change, claiming the opposition’s policy was dictated by “ideology and idiocy”.

• Anthony Albanese has defended the government’s new $2.5bn resettlement deal with Nauru as “entirely appropriate” after allegations against the country’s president of “money laundering and corruption” aired in parliament this week.

Thanks for your company today.

Updated at 7.20am GMT

7.04am GMT

Children targeted by racism feel it ‘deep in their soul’

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are being increasingly targeted by discrimination, data from a national racism register has found.

More than a quarter of reports of racist incidents against Indigenous people were directed at young people up to the age of 19, the 2024-25 Call it Out annual report found.

Based on 442 reports submitted between March 2024 and March 2025, it showed an increase of 10% over the previous year.

Mounty Aboriginal Youth and Community Services youth ambassador Amelia Whyman said racism can have a lasting effect on young people:

A kid can grow up in a happy family and then experience racism, and they get confused about their place in the world.

You can get scared for your cultural safety, your physical safety, you feel it deep in your soul.

- AAP

Updated at 7.06am GMT