What we learned: Thursday, 12 December
We will wrap up the live blog here for today, but this is what made the news:
Victoria’s opposition leader John Pesutto defamed fellow Liberal MP Moira Deeming in comments made after neo-Nazis gatecrashed a rally she helped organise, a federal court has found. It ordered Pesutto to pay $300,000 in damages.
Pesutto has vowed to stay on as leader despite several calls for him to resign after the ruling.
Deeming said the ruling was cathartic, and she is prepared to return to the Liberal party.
The federal government announced a “news bargaining incentive” charge applied to digital platforms with Australian revenues of over $250m, effectively refunded by an offset if they pay news companies directly instead.
The move was welcomed by media but criticised by the tech sector.
Climate 200 founder and energy expert Simon Holmes a Court has said nuclear energy being ready by 2044 is “optimistic”.
Australian employers added more staff than expected last month, and fewer people were hunting for work, pushing the unemployment rate down to 3.9%.
A Papua New Guinea rugby league team will join the NRL in 2028.
Australia voted for a ceasefire in Gaza and to support a UN Palestinian aid agency that Israel is moving to dismantle, which passed with 158 countries supporting the motion.
Australia’s race discrimination commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman described the Synagogue firebombing in Melbourne and the anti-Israel graffiti in Sydney as “shocking [and] deeply distressing, and it has no place in our country.”
Until tomorrow, enjoy your evening.
Updated
Afghan refugee taking on Labor in federal election says party left safe-seat in ‘cycle of neglect’
Labor’s stronghold in the north-western Melbourne seat of Calwell has attracted another independent challenger looking to upset the party’s chances at the next federal election.
Samim Moslih, a refugee who came to Australia from Afghanistan as a young boy in the 1980s, has announced he’ll take on the seat created in 1984 and only ever held by Labor MPs.
Maria Vamvakinou, who has held Calwell since 2001, announced her retirement earlier this year. Her former adviser, Basem Abdo, a Palestinian-Australian, is expected to run for Labor at the next election.
Moslih criticised federal Labor for taking the seat for granted in a statement on Thursday.
Labor has assumed our votes without delivering even the basics to meet the community’s needs, while the Liberals have overlooked our landscape entirely because they know we aren’t their voters. The cycle of neglect has left Calwell behind.
Moslih, who follows other “grassroots” announcements in key Labor seats seeking to win over Muslim voters after the conflict in Gaza, said his policies represented traditional family and community values, diversity of culture and faith, and smaller government.
Imagine how great our country would be if the current lot of politicians focused their time and our funds towards easing the cost of living pressures and housing crisis here in our own land, rather than justifying and enabling a genocide of an occupied people halfway around the world.
About a quarter of voters in Calwell are Muslim, according to the 2021 census. While Vamvakinou holds the seat by a safe margin of 12.4%, the party saw a 10% primary vote drop in the 2022 election.
Updated
