Senator breaks ranks on Gaza – as it happened | Australian politics

We will wrap up the live blog for tonight right here. Here’s what made the news today:

• On the morning after the budget, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said the measures would moderate inflation in the country.

• The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, meanwhile has backed the $300 rebate for energy but wants it means-tested.

• The Labor senator Fatima Payman accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and questioned how many deaths will be enough for the prime minister to declare “enough”.

• Pro-Palestine protesters at the Australian National University (ANU) were advised to vacate their encampments or risk breaching the university’s code of conduct, becoming the second university management in Australia to crack down on the camps.

• Hundreds of protesters descended on the main arts building at the University of Melbourne on the Parkville campus, unofficially renaming it after a prospective Palestinian student who was killed in Gaza.

• Victoria’s speaker, Maree Edwards, told Greens MPs they are not allowed to wear the keffiyeh in parliament.

• Peak farming groups including the National Farmers Federation staged a walkout during the agriculture minister Murray Watt’s post-budget speech this morning in outrage over the government’s decision to ban live sheep exports.

• Wages rose faster than consumer prices in the March quarter.

Amy will be back with you tomorrow, with all the day’s news ahead of the opposition leader’s budget reply speech tomorrow night. Until then, enjoy your evening.

Kelly Burke

Budget throws a lifeline to Australia’s live music industry

The budget has thrown a multimillion-dollar lifeline to a cultural sector plagued by multiple postponements and cancellations over the past 12 months.

Live music will receive $8.6m in additional funding, announced yesterday less than a week after a parliamentary inquiry into the music festival sector urged the government to provide emergency funding to prevent possible market collapse.

The news was greeted with relief by peak live performance organisations, including the Australian Recording Industry Association, Live Performance Australia and the music rights management organisation Apra Amcos.

“This urgent funding comes at a crucial time,” the Apra Amcos chief executive, Dean Ormston, said in a statement. Australia had lost more than a quarter of its live music venues and stages since the pandemic, he said.

Paul Karp

Controversial deportation bill unlikely to come to Senate vote this week

Guardian Australia has seen a Labor and Greens-supported hours motion relating to which bills must be dealt with in the Senate by Thursday. There are 10 bills on it including the Administrative Review Tribunal bill, but not the government’s controversial deportation bill.

There’s been no agreement between Labor and the Coalition on the opposition’s amendments, nor to support a procedural motion guaranteeing it will come to a vote.

The Coalition and Greens argue the bill is no longer urgent because the government won the ASF17 high court case, ensuring it has the power to keep non-citizens who don’t cooperate with removal in detention.

On Friday Anthony Albanese said:

The Coalition say they support [the bill] in principle, why have they delayed it? They’ll have an opportunity to vote for it.

Seems like they won’t have an opportunity to vote for it because the Coalition and Greens don’t currently support it coming to a vote. A bit of a Catch-22 about how the Senate works. But it seems off the agenda for this week unless there is a dramatic change in the next 24 hours.

Daniel Hurst

‘Palestine will be free,’ Labor senator says in interview

Fatima Payman, the Labor senator, also called for freedom from the Israeli occupation, freedom from violence and freedom from inequality “from the river to the sea”.

Payman told SBS News:

We can be on the right side of history so that when the young read about us, they can be proud Australians, knowing that their country at a time when it was needed had the moral clarity to do what is right. That the voices calling for freedom and for justice were heard. I ask you to join me to continue to call for freedom from the occupation, freedom from the violence and freedom from the inequality. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has recently expressed opposition to the use of the “river to the sea” phrase, which has become highly charged at the current time. Prominent Jewish groups have labelled the phrase as calling for full Palestinian control in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, excluding the possibility of a state of Israel.

Others, such as the Palestinian-American writer Yousef Munayyer, have argued the phrase express a desire for Palestinians to be able to “live in their homeland as free and equal citizens, neither dominated by others nor dominating them”. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said he won’t compromise on full Israeli security control west of the Jordan River.

Payman was originally intended to read out her statement to a Nakba protest rally outside Parliament House in Canberra today. “But understandably there is disillusionment in the community with the parties. We will work to close this gap.”

Caitlin Cassidy

University of Melbourne students ‘ready to link arms’ if police try to break up encampment

University of Melbourne undergraduate student Gemma O’Toole is among around 40 people occupying the middle of the Arts West building ready to link arms and, if necessary, resist police arrest.

She says the university’s acting provost, Pip Nicholson, visited protesters at about 1.30pm today warning them that they were violating the university’s rules and police would be in attendance within the hour if they did not leave.

Nicholson said in the event students had not left, “the university will make decisions that will regrettably and unavoidably escalate the tension”.

The choices you make this afternoon will have serious consequences.

Police have recently arrived on the scene and are yet to arrest any students, but O’Toole says she is prepared to face charges for their cause.

Students want the university to divest from weapons manufacturers and disclose their ties to Israel. O’Toole says they will not stop until their demands are met.

We don’t want to be at a university that funds research for war. Students have always been on the right side of history and always been met with the sort of reaction we’re getting right now.

Look at protests against South African apartheid, the Vietnam war … it continues … as we look back on these movements, people see the students were right but we still get attacked.

Luca Ittimani

Labor looks for a way to let households switch to cheaper energy with a single click

Something you might have missed in yesterday’s budget – the government wants to set up a new online path for households to switch to cheaper energy plans with a single click.

It has set aside $1.8m to fast-track research into the best way to help Australians find or adopt better deals for their energy needs, in an effort to help consumers get their energy costs down.

At the moment, retailers are compelled to tell customers if they could get a better deal, but they don’t have to make it easy, so many households end up stuck on more expensive default plans – effectively paying a loyalty tax.

The government’s ideal outcome would be a single link, website or email that would send the user right to a cheaper deal.

However, we shouldn’t expect any flashy new button this year. The government hasn’t figured out how it can force retailers to help customers swap energy policies, so the new money will all go to consultation and investigation efforts.

Those will need the cooperation of the states, which are responsible for energy retailing, and the Australian Energy Market Commission, which would be in charge of any new rules.

The government will be hoping it all comes together in time to take over from its $300 rebate on households’ electricity bills, which will be paid in four parts over the coming financial year.

We’ll get a better sense of the next steps in July, when the energy ministers meet and discuss the one-click switch and other proposed changes from the budget.

Labor senator Fatima Payman breaks ranks to accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza

Daniel Hurst

The Labor senator Fatima Payman has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and has questioned how many deaths will be enough for the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to declare “enough”.

Breaking ranks with her party by using the label genocide, Payman told SBS News today:

My conscience has been uneasy for far too long. And I must call this out for what it is. This is a genocide and we need to stop pretending otherwise.

The lack of clarity, the moral confusion, the indecisiveness is eating at the heart of this nation. It is dividing and confusing the nation. Hundreds of thousands are on the streets, encampments are taking place across the universities. Multiculturalism is at stake. Social cohesion is at stake. I bring you not only my voice, but the voice of those who I represent and the voice of the communities that I speak to. We cannot be disconnected from the people of Australia, the young of this nation are telling us and we are silencing them. The future of this nation is speaking and we are silencing them instead of advocating for justice.

Payman said Australia should be standing up for freedom and human dignity:

I ask the prime minister and our fellow parliamentarians: how many international rights laws must Israel break for us to say enough? What is the magic number? How many lives need to be lost … how many mass graves need to be uncovered before we say enough? … How many Palestinian lives are enough to call this violence against them terrorism? How many lives does it does it take to call this a genocide?

The Israeli government maintains its military operations are a legitimate response to Hamas’s 7 October attacks and has dismissed allegations it is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, saying the suggestion is “false” and “outrageous”.

The international court of justice has yet to make a substantive ruling on the genocide allegations, but said in an interim ruling in January the claims were “plausible” and ordered Israel to take all steps to prevent genocidal acts and incitement.

Caitlin Cassidy

Stop ‘appeasing insolent children’, Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO says

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has condemned an ongoing pro-Palestine occupation at the University of Melbourne. Its co-CEO Alex Ryvchin said the time for “indulging and appeasing insolent children running amok has passed”.

If the university can’t ensure the immediate safety and security of all students and staff, the police need to. It can’t be that those who want to paralyse our institutions for their own emotional gratification prevail.

Meanwhile, the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (Apan) has reaffirmed its support for encampments following disband orders from Deakin University and the Australian National University (ANU).

In a statement, the body expressed its concern for possible escalation by management at the University of Melbourne.

It is unacceptable that the ANU and University of Melbourne have threatened to penalise students involved in protests.

Protest is a vital and legitimate right within a democracy, and it is a credit to these students and university staff that they are exercising this right despite attempts by Zionist groups, the mainstream media and politicians of various stripes to smear, silence and punish them.

Amy Remeikis

With the parliament settling into a bit of a lull, I am going to hand you over to Josh Taylor who will guide you through the evening.

Tomorrow is Peter Dutton’s budget-in-reply speech, which we will cover in detail – but before that, we’ll cover off the parliament day as usual. Until then, take care of you.

Adam Morton

Conservationists say budget is ‘one of the worst in recent years’ for environment spending

Scientists and conservationists sharply criticised the government for not addressing a long-term funding shortfall needed to protect nature, which a state-of-the-environment report found was in poor and deteriorating health.

The top nature-related spending highlighted by the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, was a reannouncement of $176m to establish two new agencies, Environment Protection Australia and Environment Information Australia.

Funding for both was included in last year’s budget.

The Biodiversity Council, an independent science organisation set up by 11 Australian universities, said the budget was “one of the worst in recent years” for new environment spending and noted Treasurer Jim Chalmers did not mention nature protection and recovery in his speech on Tuesday. The lead councillor, Prof Sarah Bekessy, said:

Continuing to run down our natural capital will ultimately come at our peril.

The Australian Conservation Foundation’s chief executive, Kelly O’Shanassy, said nature spending was inadequate and projected to “drop disastrously”, and the government did not have a plan to meet its promise of no new extinction. “Meanwhile the threat of extinctions continues to grow,” she said.

Caitlin Cassidy

Protesters appearing to build barricade in University of Melbourne building

The University of Melbourne has cancelled classes in its Arts West building from 3.15pm this afternoon as a result of an ongoing occupation by pro-Palestine protesters.

In a statement, the university said further advice would be provided from subject coordinators once available, and directed staff and students with concerns other than immediate security to its support services.

For the safety and security of all students and staff, please avoid the area.

This protest activity has been determined to breach university policy and protesters have been asked to vacate the building by 2.30pm. The university is working with university security and, if required, Victoria Police to ensure the safety and security of all students and staff.

Protesters have rejected the university’s requests to vacate, and are beginning to drag tables and chairs through the Arts West foyer in order to create what appears to be a barricade while chanting “all universities must divest”.

Caitlin Cassidy

Police monitoring protest at University of Melbourne as protesters asked to leave building

Victoria police have told Guardian Australia it is monitoring a protest at the University of Melbourne and will “respond to any public order issues if required”.

Earlier this afternoon, hundreds of protesters descended on the main arts building on the Parkville campus, unofficially renaming it after a prospective Palestinian student who was killed in Gaza.

Outside the university’s Arts West building, students are chanting “Israel out of Palestine” and “long live the intifada”, while protesters continue to occupy the main entrance with banners, tents, chairs and flags.

The university’s student news paper, Farrago, posted on X that protesters have been asked to leave the building peacefully by deputy vice-chancellor, Pip Nicholson, and have been told the university does not want escalation or violence.

Guardian Australia’s Lisa Favazzo is on the scene. She has not seen any police but says security is present and students are planning for an escalation.

The University of Melbourne has been approached for comment.

Wong rejects Hanson claim about doing ‘bidding of terrorists’ on UN Palestine vote

Daniel Hurst

Penny Wong explained to Pauline Hanson that the Palestinian mission at the UN represented the Palestinian Authority (not Hamas), and that the general assembly resolution backed by Australia extended “more rights as an observer”.
Hanson was unsatisfied with the answer. The One Nation leader – speaking with the protection of parliamentary privilege – asked the following supplementary question in the Senate:

An editorial in the Australian newspaper two days ago reported Hamas has welcomed the resolution that your government supported in the UN last week. Would you please explain to the Australian people why your government has done the bidding of terrorists who have committed the greatest atrocity against Jewish people since the Holocaust?

Wong replied that she did not agree with Hanson’s assertion. The foreign affairs minister told the Senate:

I’ve explained to you that a vote for two states is not a vote for Hamas, in fact it is precisely the opposite of what Hamas wants. I would make the point that they have made clear their intent.

What we have do, as an international community, is to look at how we might bring momentum to security for both Israelis and Palestinians. That is what we are doing.

And I appreciate you don’t agree with it, Senator Hanson, but that is our motivation and I think it is wrong to make the assertions that you are making about why we took that decision and why we voted as we did.

I’d make the point that our special strategic partner Japan, that the Republic of Korea, that New Zealand all took the same decision.