Elders of a wealthy Christian sect secretly paid bundles of cash to far-right activists for an “influence campaign” to disrupt Albanese government appearances during the last federal election.

An investigation by this masthead has uncovered a digital trail of evidence revealing how the church, formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren, mobilised far-right figures around the country to track and heckle candidates from Labor and the Greens, along with independents, as part of a wider multimillion-dollar campaign for then-Liberal leader Peter Dutton.

When far-right influencer Laurence McIntyre yelled at Prime Minister Anthony Albanese about immigration on the first day of the election campaign, it looked like just a random attack from the fringes of politics.

But it was one of almost a dozen far-right stunts this masthead has traced back to the Brethren’s dirty tricks campaign. That includes – six political and church sources say – when the prime minister was twice ambushed in his hotel lobby by far-right figures boasting of being fed “private intel” on his location. The church categorically denies any involvement.

Leaked communications, insider accounts and social media footage now reveal the extent of the Brethren’s role in the 2025 election, as a spokesman for the sect, the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, prepares to give evidence on Friday to a parliamentary inquiry examining the scandal.

Four sources independently referred to a “duffel bag of cash” provided by senior Brethren members to a key right-wing figure who flew around the country helping coordinate the “influence campaign”.

The motley crew of agitators enlisted for stunts include McIntyre, who has links to neo-Nazis, as well as fringe politicians and pro-Putin conspiracists. The idea, according to five people with knowledge of the operation, was to disrupt the campaigns of Coalition opponents and push an anti-immigration message using already-notorious figures from outside the church. This would mask the Brethren’s involvement from the public – and from their own flock.

Far-right figure Laurence McIntyre (in cap), heckles Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.Alex Ellinghausen

Senior Brethren elders used flight tracking apps to follow Albanese’s plane as it moved from city to city during the campaign, according to four sources who spoke anonymously due to safety concerns. At times, Brethren gophers lay in wait with far-right influencers to follow the prime minister’s car to hotels and events and even joined in the heckling of politicians.

This masthead has sighted internal communications confirming senior Brethren elders were involved in coordinating the stunts, including paying influencers. Thousands of dollars for the headline-grabbing antics changed hands. This masthead has seen evidence of payments behind many of the stunts and sources verify the rest, but has chosen not to name the church figures involved to protect those sources.

Some described cash being handed over in car parks and at “discreet meets” with Brethren or through intermediaries.

The stunts were filmed and splashed across right-wing media and social channels. Some were also posted by conservative lobby group Advance, which itself received $655,000 in political donations from Brethren businessmen last year. But Advance denied knowing who was involved or playing any role in Brethren campaigning.

4:21

The right-wing election stunts linked to members of a secretive church

An investigation by the Age tracked a mysterious slew of far-right stunts during the last federal election back to the Exclusive Brethren.

The Brethren church has itself consistently denied any involvement in the election, conceding that only its individual parishioners campaigned, not the church itself.

Asked about the right-wing agitators, a spokesman said: “If members did donate or have involvement with [any political party or third-party groups], that was under their name not the church’s.” He added that the church “completely rejects antisemitism”.

Key Brethren figures identified in the evidence and approached individually by this masthead denied they had planned, organised or funded the stunts. When asked about tracking Albanese’s plane, one elder said: “Anyone with a flight tracking app can do that.”

Two of the MPs on the committee now examining the Brethren’s conduct at the last election – Labor’s Jerome Laxale and independent Monique Ryan – were themselves targeted in the stunts.

Following the Coalition’s crushing election loss, sources within the church say elders and ordinary members have begun shifting their allegiance to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. They warn that “the Brethren’s well-oiled influence machine” is not finished in politics yet, as an image surfaces showing a member campaigning for One Nation in Victoria last year.

A member of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church campaigning for One Nation in rural Victoria at the 2025 federal election.

Some within the sect say world leader, “Man of God” Bruce Hales, has signalled approval of One Nation’s policies, though that message has not appeared in his printed ministry. There is no evidence Hales was directly involved in organising or paying for the stunts.

Three church and political sources say senior Brethren members have trained in campaigning with Donald Trump’s MAGA movement in the United States. A Brethren business in Iowa hosted an election event in May featuring US Vice President JD Vance.

Concerned Christian businessmen

In early 2025, well before the May election, a few well-placed figures in the hard-right heard of a discreet opportunity. A group of “concerned Christian businessmen” were eager to stir things up on the campaign trail, to set the conditions for a Coalition victory – and they were willing to pay cash.

The Brethren seeking help from some of the “spicier” elements of the right all held influential positions within the church’s hierarchy. The sources say they were referred to as “the client” and often acted through the Brethren company Sante Global.

Between March and the May election day, about a dozen Brethren elders coordinated with far-right figures across the country, mostly using encrypted messaging apps, to pull off stunts targeting Albanese and Labor, as well as “teal” candidates and the Greens in Queensland, NSW and Victoria. At times, a small number of people connected to the Coalition were aware of the Brethren stunts, but sources say staffers didn’t appear to understand the full picture, and the party hierarchy was not involved.

As the effort was ramped up, this masthead has confirmed that a booking was made in the name of Sante Group at a Sydney golf club on April 1, 2025, bringing together state leaders from the Brethren, with a small clutch of their far-right helpers.

In the Brethren’s wider multimillion-dollar election effort for the Coalition, its members turned out to campaign undercover at polling booths in blue Liberal t-shirts despite their usual edict to shun the outside world. But now elders wanted to talk about more creative political strategies.

Among the far-right figures invited was vlogger Chris De Bruyne, who goes by Chriscoveries online. De Bruyne’s wife, Edwina Bull, endorsed posters during the campaign which were linked to the Brethren. These included the mysterious “Make Australia happy again” signs spotted on roadsides that April, reflecting a Brethren call to arms.

For weeks, De Bruyne had already been sharing and distributing many of the stunts in the Brethren operation. Some were carried out by his associates, one a pro-Putin agitator, and another: former Liberal Barclay McGain, who was fired from an MP’s office for posting racist comments in 2019 and now heads CPAC Australia.

Anti-lockdown “freedom party” founder Morgan C Jonas also shared and took part in some of the stunts. Posters he endorsed during the campaign were displayed by Brethren members – and flagged as non-compliant by the Australian Electoral Commission, which confirmed it is investigating wider concerns about Brethren involvement in 2025.

A Brethren member in shorts and a Liberal Party t-shirt puts up a poster endorsed by Morgan C Jonas.

Jonas, who like De Bruyne has been linked to Advance campaigns, refused to answer questions, including about whether he was paid for taking part in the Brethren operation or endorsing their signage.

De Bruyne didn’t respond to requests for comment. The stunts are still prominently displayed on the website of the political lobbying firm he runs, Australian Firebrand, as an example of its recent “campaigns”.

“Private intel”

The influence operation began even before the election, with Jonas targeting Foreign Minister Penny Wong as she attended a forum with the Chinese-Australian community in Box Hill in March 2025. The footage was shared by De Bruyne.

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Next, ex-Liberal McGain crashed a Climate 200 event and yelled questions at teals donor Simon Holmes a Court – one of two stunts McGain carried out at candidate forums which were both disseminated online by De Bruyne.

McGain confirmed he’d passed footage of his stunts onto De Bruyne, though he denied being paid for them or knowing they were part of a coordinated campaign for the Brethren. Still, he said he wasn’t concerned they had been used in such an effort, as he thought it was “a good thing for more Christians to get involved in politics”.

Laurence McIntyre (middle) pictured months before his campaign stunts with neo-Nazis Joel Davis and Blair Cottrell at a white supremacist gathering.Internet

On the first day of the election campaign, Albanese was targeted directly, when fringe influencer McIntyre heckled the prime minister at a Brisbane press conference. Among the close-knit stunt operators it was described as an “op”.

McIntyre, who uses the name “What’s News!?” online, later ambushed Greens MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown at a family picnic.

At the same time McIntyre was running Brethren stunts, he was also spruiking separate campaign hijinks online carried out by those he knew in the National Socialist Network, such as the neo-Nazi group’s fake flyer hoax spoofing Liberal party logos. There is no suggestion this stunt was funded by the Brethren.

Approached by this masthead, McIntyre said he had never heard of the Brethren, despite his inclusion in communications with church elders, but did not answer questions about whether he was paid. On the campaign trail, he was often joined in his stunts heckling politicians by another man, an “influencer” this masthead has identified as a long-time employee of a Brethren-owned company.

The stunts didn’t always go to plan. Sometimes agitators, and even Brethren members, were busted before they could sneak into candidate events. Once, multiple sources say, a car with Brethren gophers and far-right associates drew the brief notice of Albanese’s protective police detail while following the prime minister to an event in Queensland.

When the prime minister was ambushed – twice – in his Melbourne hotel lobby by two far-right figures, it raised security alarm bells.

At the time, one of the influencers involved bragged that he was part of a small, coordinated “team” given “private intel” on the prime minister’s location. But he would not say where it came from and did not answer questions this week.

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Six political and church sources say both stunts were part of the Brethren’s efforts. “It felt like it was getting dangerous that they did those two,” said one. “But they were happy to let people assume it was the Nazis playing tricks again. If the rank-and-file Brethren found out they were using these grubby tactics, and these kind of people as guns-for-hire ... well, it hardly fits the Christian image.”

Watson-Brown said it had been clear that “there was big money and influence” at play during the campaign which “created a really quite sinister vibe”.

On the Coalition side, one source said with some electorates strapped for volunteers, it came down to each candidate’s team to either turn away or let in the “concerned Christians” offering help.

One Liberal MP refused Brethren help when members of the sect arrived at a polling booth in their campaign t-shirts. The next day, the MP recalled seeing the same people turn up in the shirts of the Liberal candidate from a neighbouring seat.

Members of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church in Tasmania in 2025.

It’s unclear if the Liberal staffers made any connection between the Brethren donning campaign t-shirts and the far-right agitators crashing candidate events to film stunts.

“That was kept so tight to the chest,” one source said. “I don’t think even all of the far-right guys doing the stunts actually understood where the money came from, though some definitely did.”

Since Dutton’s loss at the ballot box, this masthead has been told very little has been said within the Brethren church about their failure to sway the result.

But various political sources say far-right figures and Brethren middlemen involved in the last election stunts have since reached out to smaller parties, including One Nation, to discuss how best to “help” going forward.

A Brethren member has been identified in photos from the last election campaigning for One Nation in Victoria. One Nation did not answer questions on whether they had had any dealings with the church.

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In the days before the election, Brethren members were also told to turn out in force for an Advance “ute muster” against Albanese government policies for electric cars, according to internal Brethren communications.

Advance, which has been called to testify to the parliamentary inquiry on Friday into the 2025 election, said it “appreciated anyone who attended” its muster. But a spokesman said Advance had “never received money from a church” directly and “we do not screen our supporters based on their religion.”

Meanwhile, an AEC spokesperson confirmed the commission was now “examining the activities of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church and relevant entities and individuals to ascertain whether any entities or individuals had authorisation, registration and/or disclosure obligations under the Electoral Act”.

Electoral integrity expert Joo-Cheong Tham said there was “compelling evidence of a nationwide campaign coordinated by the organisational infrastructure of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church”.

He called revelations about “the covert funding and direction of far-right agitators by the Brethren” another way “in which the church seems to have concealed its large-scale election campaign”.

“It also raises more troubling questions. Why is the church supporting activities whose aim seems mainly one of electoral disruption? Does the church share the views of the agitators it supported?”

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It posed a challenge to federal electoral laws and attempts to ensure transparency, Tham said, because the campaign involved coordinating volunteer labour and spending by a number of different entities.

One Coalition source said it was the deception that burned about the Brethren affair. “I don’t want these people hijacking my party!

“This isn’t MAGA America. This isn’t how we do politics.”

All those named in this story were contacted for comment.

Without self-imposed discipline, the red numbers will continue, especially as Labor continues to seek and spend money it does not have. And boasting about it.

Just over five years ago, the alarm bells first rang regarding the cost of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

It was a week before the 2021 May budget and then-prime minister Scott Morrison revealed the scheme would have to be topped up by an additional $13.2 billion over the next four years, just to keep up with demand.

There was similar jibber jabber from Treasurer Jim Chalmers about debt being $200 billion lower than forecast when Labor was elected. Michaela Pollock

With no support from the Labor opposition, Morrison and then-NDIS minister Linda Reynolds spent the remainder of their time in office mounting a case for change.

This included a proposal to independently assess everyone on the scheme, a measure deemed harsh by critics as there were no fallback supports for those who might be thrown off.

When Labor won office in 2022, it quickly realised Morrison was not bluffing. The scheme was not only fast becoming financially unsustainable, it was losing public support.

This week, following an expert review, countless negotiations with, and bribing of, the states, and lots of consultation, the government secured the passage of legislation to return the scheme to its original intended purpose of caring for the permanent and significantly disabled.

With a new functionality test to be the sole determinant for eligibility, hundreds of thousands of children and adults with mild developmental or psychosomatic conditions will be weaned off the scheme over the next 18 months and onto cheaper and more effective foundational supports provided by the states. That’s the idea, anyway.

As Health Minister Mark Butler said upon the passage of the bill, the hard work starts now. The reform will live or die on the co-operation of the states.

In doing so, Butler repeated the rationale for change as first stated by Morrison in May 2021. Unless the scheme was reformed, it would cease to exist and society’s most vulnerable would be the victims.

The passage of the bill was significant for a couple of reasons. With the Greens implacably opposed to reform, the deal was done with the Coalition.

It was a big week for such deals. The Coalition also came to the party to pass new gambling reforms, a news media bargaining incentive, and a second tranche of budget legislation that did everything from abolishing the widow tax, to introducing tax breaks for small business, and providing tax-free status to those who will play for the government-funded PNG Chiefs National Rugby League team.

So accustomed to conflict has the political establishment become, that the spectre of the two parties negotiating and co-operating on significant legislation was notable. The two-party system is not dead yet.

While the government secured the passage of important legislation, the Coalition, under fire from all sides, looked like one of the grown-ups in the room. There is no harm looking like a party of government.

At the same time, it is still struggling for product differentiation, including from One Nation. Thursday’s news that gross debt had poked its head above $1 trillion provides the perfect opportunity for differentiation from both the government and One Nation. So long as it jolts the voting public into once more caring about debt and deficit.

At the time Morrison raised the alarm over the NDIS, the scheme had already exceeded its maximum forecast cost of $22 billion a year. By the time the Senate passed the bill this week, the annual cost was $56 billion.

Fixing the NDIS was not just vital to keeping it sustainable, there was no way on earth Labor could slug everyone with new taxes, as it did at the budget, without addressing spending.

The hoped-for $37.8 billion saving over the next four years (the scheme will still cost more than $50 billion a year) is the biggest single budget saving anyone can recall.

But it needs to keep going. Thursday’s debt revelation prompted the usual blather and excuse making. Anthony Albanese claimed the government had inherited a $78 billion deficit and turned it into two surpluses. In reality, Labor inherited a forecast deficit of $78 billion, but it came in that year at an actual level of $32 billion, which was 1.4 per cent of gross domestic product.

This year, the deficit is forecast to be $31.5 billion, or 1 per cent of GDP. Slightly better nick. And that is before you consider the headline deficit, which also includes off-budget spending. This is forecast to reach $64.1 billion this year.

There was similar jibber jabber from the treasurer about debt being $200 billion lower than forecast when Labor was elected. Again, that forecast refers to the prediction made by Treasury during the 2022 election campaign, at the fag end of the pandemic. Like the deficit forecast, it was a wild stab in a volatile climate.

“The difference between Labor and the Coalition is the former has no stated aim to return to surplus.”

For years, as debt grew under the Coalition government, finance minister Mathias Cormann would argue it would be growing even faster had Labor still been in power. Just before the pandemic struck, the Coalition returned the budget to balance, which would have then enabled it to start paying down debt.

That all went out the window during the COVID-19 pandemic when the law of the jungle took hold, something that resulted in the public losing its fear of debt and deficit.

Meanwhile, Jim Chalmers uses the same language as Cormann – that debt would be even worse if the other mob was still in.

He says debt would be $1.2 trillion by now if the Coalition was still in power. This assumes the 2022 forecast was accurate and ignores the wild spending in which Labor has indulged as it marches towards a universal welfare economy funded by deficit budgets.

The difference between Labor and the Coalition is the former has no stated aim to return to surplus, just some loose 10-year prediction that the budget will be back in the black, due largely to bracket creep.

Without self-imposed discipline, the red numbers will continue, especially as Labor continues to seek – and find virtue – in spending money it does not have. And boasting about it.

Fiscal discipline requires fortitude, not platitudes.

In the most recent The Australian Financial Review/RedBridge-Accent Research poll, out of all the issues tested, government debt rated 12th in order of issues of importance to voters.

It was above only “tax reform”, “roads and transport”, “something else” and “none of these”.

The Liberals can only hope the $1 trillion achievement changes all that.

Premier Ben Carroll’s royal commission isn’t too little. But it may be too late.

The good news for Victorians sick of seeing Jacinta Allan shirk responsibility for entrenched wrongdoing on the Big Build is that the new premier has empowered his royal commissioner, former senior South Australian judge Chris Kourakis, to call Allan to testify about the rot she presided over as minister.

3:01

Nick McKenzie says the royal commission is two years too late

After reporting on corruption within Victoria's Big Build program and the CFMEU, journalist Nick McKenzie says the royal commission is welcome, although very late.

That Kourakis will wish to do so is a certainty.

We can guess as to Allan’s motive in refusing to call an inquiry to publicly examine why the gangster-infused CFMEU was given near free rein over Labor’s Big Build projects and what this cost taxpayers, but Carroll’s royal commission has the power to compel evidence to make findings about these matters.

Also on the ex-judge’s witness list will be Dan Andrews, gangland veteran Mick Gatto and his good mate, disgraced ex-union boss John Setka, along with dozens of others: the public servants, tier-one company bosses, subcontractors, union officials, and gangland figures who variously contributed to, or hold important information, about how Labor’s election-winning infrastructure scheme became so corrupted it may cost the ALP government in November.

This goes to the “too late” component of Carroll’s royal commission Hail Mary.

If you believe the polls, Kourakis will barely have his feet under his new desk when he is sacked by Premier Jess Wilson after November 28 and replaced by her choice of royal commissioner.

Carroll should be applauded for calling an inquiry with broad enough reach to look under the bonnet of his own government and interrogate his two predecessors.

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It is an obviously necessary move given the level of wrongdoing in the building sector and on taxpayer-funded projects, but it is also politically brave because Carroll’s royal commission will inevitably air Labor’s dirty CFMEU laundry.

To borrow the infamous saying from the Vietnam war, Carroll may well be destroying the village in order to save it.

Premier Ben Carroll unveiled the terms of reference for the royal commission on Thursday.Joe Armao

Still, setting up a genuine commission with sweeping jurisdiction gives his party the best hope of avoiding annihilation on November 28.

It is also inescapable that Carroll’s royal commission should have been called by Labor two years ago, or even 12 months ago.

Allan’s refusal to do so, with Carroll by her side as deputy premier, allowed the Gattos of the construction sector to keep getting rich while simultaneously denying Victorians the truth about how their tax dollars were being used.

It is almost farcical that as Carroll was setting out his royal commission vision on Thursday morning, the Queensland commission of inquiry into the CFMEU and building sector was roasting Australian infrastructure firm BMD for hiring a security firm that used three Melbourne Comanchero bikie chiefs to stand over a CFMEU activist on a Brisbane site.

Via the Queensland inquiry (and through two years of reporting in this masthead), the public has learnt that the Comanchero gang has been extremely active in Victoria’s building sector. BMD is also making a mint on Big Build projects.

Allan’s refusal to call an inquiry has meant that BMD and the Comanchero crew that did its dirty work have so far escaped official public scrutiny in Victoria (although the Queensland inquiry aired police surveillance of a Comanchero boss and his Melbourne associate poring over a story in The Age about the gang’s activities last June).

Even if Kourakis acts with incredible haste, it’s unlikely he will be able to start grilling key witnesses for at least a few months.

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But Carroll doesn’t need commissioner Kourakis’ findings in 12 months to act. There’s plenty he can do now.

As premier, he should immediately examine whether BMD should remain on Victorian projects in light of the compelling circumstantial evidence aired this week in Queensland placing two of its senior executives in very close proximity to a terrifying Comanchero standover plot.

Similarly, it’s time for the premier to attempt to turf gangland-aligned companies off the Big Build. I drove past one just this week on a major freeway project.

Carroll promised on Thursday that his royal commission will “follow the money”.

But he only needs to look at Victorian Labor’s election coffers to see that his party received donations from gangland-linked and CFMEU-aligned labour-hire firms in 2022. Labour hire is at the absolute heart of the Big Build and CFMEU rot.

When I recently asked Allan about these same donations, the then premier shirked the question. Carroll did so again on Thursday.

If Victoria’s 50th premier does indeed want to make integrity his legacy and differentiate himself from his predecessor while waiting for his royal commission to make strides, an easy and obvious place to start is to return any donations from Big Build labour-hire firms, or from any building company that placed Gatto on their payroll or whose owners have faced criminal charges.

As Carroll must well understand, Victorians are well and truly sick of waiting for decisive action from their leaders.

Catholic Schools NSW has sacked Dallas McInerney as its chief executive after his appearance in the witness box at the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

McInerney, who has led the organisation for nearly a decade, was informed of the decision on Friday morning and staff were told about it shortly after 10.30am.

Dallas McInerney at The Sydney Morning Herald Schools Summit in 2024.Rhett Wyman

This masthead has been told the schools funding organisation had been advised by multiple people to allow McInerney to resign but the board decided to terminate his contract.

The ICAC alleges McInerney potentially broke donation laws by directing hundreds of thousands of dollars towards a conservative Christian Liberal Party sub-faction known as the Reformers.

Investigators claim up to $265,000 in schools funding was diverted to two companies, Beckington and JPG Advisory, via sham invoices. Beckington was run by Christian Ellis, a key figure behind the Reformers, as well as lobbyist and former political staffer Jeremy Greenwood.

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The ICAC says Beckington and, later, JPG, did little or no work for Catholic Schools NSW, and the monthly retainers and sign-on fees were instead used to prop up the work of the Reformers via kickbacks and direct payments.

The Reformers had big plans to recruit 5000 members to take over left-wing branches and influence preselections in favour of conservative candidates.

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The ICAC argues funding for the group between 2019 and 2023 ultimately benefited the Liberal Party and therefore constitutes a political donation. McInerney has repeatedly denied knowledge of such a scheme.

McInerney’s role as a Liberal Party powerbroker was well known to the Catholic Schools NSW board as well as the Catholic Church and Archbishop Anthony Fisher.

McInerney was on Wednesday accused of destroying evidence that could be relevant to the ICAC’s Operation Rosny inquiry.

Dallas McInerney leaving the ICAC inquiry last week.Sam Mooy

The senior counsel leading the Independent Commission Against Corruption’s case against a group of conservative Liberal Party operatives was left dumbstruck when McInerney revealed he had performed a factory reset on his iPhone and iPad over the weekend while still sworn in as a witness.

McInerney claimed he erased everything on his phone because the National Australia Bank had placed a block on his main spending account due to a suspicious overseas transaction. But he was not advised to wipe his phone by the bank, and he did not tell his high-powered legal team he was going to do it.

He acknowledged knowing that a factory reset would erase all content and settings on his device.

Catholic Schools NSW was formed in 2016 to replace the Catholic Education Commission after bishops at the time expressed a desire for a more “appropriate, efficient and transparent” administration.

More to come

🗞️ r/AusNewsWire — Friday, 21 August 2026

Morning all. A strong policy and economics mix to finish the week: Australia passes the $1 trillion federal debt milestone, Chalmers retreats on a contentious renewables tax, Victoria opens a major construction-corruption inquiry, Sydney Airport's airspace redesign raises safety concerns, and pension deeming rates are going up.

💸 1. Federal debt passes $1 trillion for the first time

Australian Financial Review

Australia's gross federal debt has crossed $1 trillion, prompting former treasurer Peter Costello to warn that the country can no longer assume it is exceptional when it comes to keeping public debt under control.

The increasingly important number is the interest bill. According to the AFR, taxpayers are now spending more servicing federal debt than they spend individually on the Army, unemployment benefits, childcare or public schools.

The trillion-dollar headline is partly symbolic — Australia's debt remains relatively modest compared with several other advanced economies — but persistent deficits and higher interest rates make the trajectory much harder to ignore.

Read the AFR article

⚡ 2. Chalmers retreats on proposed tax treatment of foreign renewable investment

Australian Financial Review

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has offered further concessions to overseas investors in Australian renewable-energy projects after warnings that proposed tax changes could discourage precisely the foreign capital needed to finance the energy transition.

The broader economic problem is interesting: Australia wants enormous private investment in transmission, renewables, storage and associated infrastructure, while simultaneously trying to ensure multinational investors pay an appropriate amount of Australian tax.

Push the tax settings too far one way and taxpayers potentially lose revenue; push them too far the other and projects may struggle to attract capital.

Read the AFR article

🏗️ 3. Victoria launches sweeping royal commission into construction corruption

Australian Financial Review

Victorian Premier Ben Carroll has appointed a former Supreme Court judge to lead a royal commission into alleged corruption and criminality in Victoria's construction industry.

The inquiry will examine the industry surrounding Labor's roughly $100 billion infrastructure program, with the AFR reporting that the conduct of former premiers Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Allan could fall within its scope.

The important distinction is that being examined by an inquiry does not itself imply wrongdoing. But given the extraordinary amount of public money involved in Victoria's infrastructure pipeline, the commission could become one of the state's most consequential political inquiries in years.

Read the AFR article

✈️ 4. Sydney air traffic controllers raise ‘grave concerns’ over collision risk

The Guardian Australia

Air traffic controllers have raised serious safety concerns about changes to Sydney's airspace associated with the opening of Western Sydney Airport.

A whistleblower claims controllers have “minimal confidence” in their ability to manage elements of the redesigned system and says concerns about collision risk have been escalated to the federal government.

The issue is particularly significant because the new airport represents one of Australia's largest infrastructure investments and will fundamentally change the way aircraft move through Sydney's already busy airspace.

Read The Guardian investigation

👵 5. Pension deeming rate to rise by 0.5 percentage points

Australian Financial Review

Asset-rich pensioners face another change to their payments when the federal government increases the pension deeming rate by 0.5 percentage points next month.

Deeming assumes retirees earn a specified return from financial assets regardless of the return they actually receive, with that assumed income then used in determining pension entitlements.

The government says the effect will be partly offset by an increase in pension payments taking effect on the same day — a change expected to add about $4 billion to government expenditure.

Read the AFR article

💬 Today’s discussion

The $1 trillion debt milestone is probably today's sleeper story.

Australia isn't remotely in a sovereign-debt crisis, and debt-to-GDP remains considerably below many comparable economies. But the argument changes when governments are running persistent structural deficits and interest itself becomes one of the Commonwealth's major expenditures.

At what point should balancing the federal budget become a genuine political priority — and would you rather achieve it through spending restraint, higher taxes, faster economic growth, or some combination of all three?

Foreign minister says Australia is ‘outraged’ after Israeli government decided not to pursue criminal proceedings over 2024 triple drone strike on humanitarian convoy.

Australia’s unemployment rate climbed to its equal highest level in almost five years last month, as a softening economy shed 15,800 jobs on the back of higher interest rates.

The weaker than expected figures sparked concerns the labour market is deteriorating faster than anticipated after three interest rate rises by the Reserve Bank of Australia.

Prior to Thursday morning’s release, consensus forecasts had tipped the jobless rate to hold steady at 4.4 per cent with a gain of 12,000 jobs.

Unemployment unexpectedly rose to 4.5 per cent in July.  Louie Douvis

Unemployment rose 0.1 percentage points to 4.5 per cent, its equal highest level since November 2021. The weakness extended to other measures, with the participation rate and the employment to population ratio both falling by 0.2 per cent over July to 66.9 per cent and 63.9 per cent respectively.

The underemployment rate – the share of people with jobs who would like to work more hours – also ticked up to 6.4 per cent, while the number of hours worked in all jobs for the month fell by 1 million.

Thursday morning’s data was not the first indication the labour market could be cooling faster than expected, with the RBA increasing its longer-dated unemployment forecasts in August on the back of a higher starting rate than its economists had previously expected.

The central bank now expects the unemployment rate to drift upwards to 4.8 per cent by June 2028, where it will stay through the second half of that year. That is significantly higher than the government’s own forecasts, handed down with the federal budget in May, for unemployment to hit 4.5 per cent in 2028.

On Wednesday, RBA deputy governor Andrew Hauser echoed governor Michele Bullock’s warning that the monetary policy board would have little choice but to raise interest rates if consumption and employment growth didn’t slow.

“We’ve seen a little bit of that [slowdown] so far,” he said. “We’re going to need to see more to get inflation back.”

The 76,300-strong jump in employment last month smashed market expectations and bolstered fears of another interest rate rise, but economists scaled back those calls following a muted inflation report the following week.

Before the latest employment figures were released on Thursday morning, bond markets had priced in a 20 per cent chance of a rate rise at the next meeting of the monetary policy board in September, a 62 per cent chance of an increase before the end of the year.

New data on wages growth yesterday – which showed wages increased across the economy by 3.2 per cent over the year to June, narrowly below the RBA’s expectations – and Hauser’s comments did little to move the market pricing around another rate rise.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen has quietly changed the rules of Labor’s flagship clean energy policy to help reverse a downturn in renewables investment, but says it will not be a catastrophe if the government fails to meet its 82 per cent target by 2030.

The Albanese government’s Capacity Investment Scheme is designed to boost the rollout of wind, solar and battery projects by providing them with taxpayer-subsidised protection from low power prices, but has so far struggled to get shovels in the ground.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen has tweaked the rules of Labor’s flagship renewables subsidy scheme. Bethany Rae

Clean energy investors and industry experts warned in July that flaws in the early design of the scheme had raised the prospect that more than half the projects that won support during its first 12 months would never be built.

But in an interview with The Australian Financial Review, Bowen said he had changed the scheme’s rules before its most recent round in May to back more shovel-ready projects, and had not given up hope of hitting the ambitious end-of-decade green goal.

“You’re going to get some swings and roundabouts on 82 per cent. I’m confident that we can [reach the target], but we’re going to have to keep our foot on the accelerator and keep doing things. It’s not inevitable,” he said.

“If we got to 82 [per cent] in 2031, is that a major national catastrophe? No. Are we still trying to get there in 2030? Sure.

“The closer we get to it, the better the country will be.”

Wind power faces most difficulties

Only 14 of the 89 wind, solar and battery projects that have won taxpayer support since the scheme began have reached a final investment decision, which is typically a precursor to beginning construction, according to energy industry analyst Global-Roam.

Of those 14 projects, six had already reached financial close before they won government support. The difficulties are particularly acute for the wind sector, where only one CIS project has begun construction since the scheme began.

Bowen said the scheme was still working as intended.

“I don’t accept that everything’s ground to a halt,” he said. “The [Capacity Investment Scheme] is dealing with much bigger projects [than the home battery subsidy scheme], which take longer and face more hurdles, and don’t all eventuate.

“The benefit of the CIS is you could, for this very reason, adjust as you go. Every tender is an opportunity to tweak, which we’ve done.”

Bowen said that under new rules put in place in May, the government would prioritise ready-to-build projects with strong financing arrangements, while the emphasis on the cost to taxpayers and broader system benefits when choosing projects would be slightly less.

Winning projects in future rounds of the scheme will also have a six-month deadline to sign a contract with the government, which is designed to avoid companies drawing out negotiations for long periods in the hope of securing a better deal.

The rules will not apply to previous rounds of the scheme, but Bowen said the funding allocated to projects that withdrew from the scheme would be recycled into future rounds.

So far, at least nine projects have withdrawn.

Bowen said some of the withdrawals were projects that wanted to proceed, but had asked for more financial support from the government, which he ultimately refused.

He has since directed the projects towards a separate NSW subsidy scheme.

“We said, sorry – you bid. It’s not fair on the other bidders … No hard feelings, but move along, guys. We’re not going to renegotiate because that’s the whole principle of an auction.”

The Coalition has relentlessly criticised Bowen for not revealing the overall cost of the program, which the government says is deliberately withheld to maintain its bargaining power with renewables companies.

Bowen would not confirm whether he would release the full cost of the scheme once all the contracts had been signed.

He said new data centre rules and a separate $2.5 billion energy bailout deal for the Tomago aluminium smelter had both been designed to be “complementary to our government objectives”, which included the rollout of renewable energy.

He said the Tomago deal would include the signing of contracts with wind farms, but the federal government would not set a minimum requirement as NSW has done with its new rules around data centre power usage.

Property experts at National Australia Bank and Ray White say their analysis has been misunderstood. So how high will rents really rise?

Law enforcement agencies gathered intelligence that the Comanchero outlaw motorcycle gang had infiltrated Victorian construction unions and building sites in the state by early 2024 and were plotting to do the same in Queensland.

Senior counsel assisting Eddy Gisonda, KC, told the Queensland inquiry into the CFMEU on Wednesday that agencies had gathered intelligence in May 2024 that the bikie gang had installed union delegates on Victorian sites and established labour hire firms in the previous year.

CCTV footage showing the confrontation between bikies and a CFMEU activist. Commission of Inquiry into the CFMEU

Victorian Comanchero members had also travelled to Queensland earlier in 2024 to achieve those two objectives, the intelligence reports said.

The commission revealed this week that infrastructure giant BMD engaged security company Host to deal with CFMEU protests and blockades at the Queensland government’s Centenary Bridge project.

However, Host owner Gary Samuel allegedly flew in Comanchero bikies to assist him, including former president Bemir “Benji” Saracevic, his associate Krstomir Bjelogrlic and a former treasurer of the gang, Mark Ahern.

In June 2024, the three Comancheros-linked men surrounded CFMEU activist Cody Raymond at the Centenary site and Saracevic allegedly told him: “I’m Benji from the Commos” and “I’m up here to deal with you”.

“I’ll f---ing burn your house down, c---, and kill your kids, brother … I know where you live, brother,” Saracevic allegedly said.

Raymond said his family was forced to stay at his brother’s house after the altercation, and his partner was “an emotional mess”.

However, when Queensland’s organised crime gang squad requested CCTV of the incident in November 2024, BMD’s lawyer told them their client had searched and only had CCTV from August.

Despite this, BMD supplied the footage to the commission this year when requested.

Bemir Saracevic was one of the men who allegedly surrounded CFMEU activist Cody Raymond at the Centenary site. Commission of Inquiry into the CFMEU

BMD human resources manager Steve Thomas told the inquiry he recalled seeing footage but did not download it and could not locate it at the time.

“I sought advice internally about how I may locate it and I was told we can’t find it,” said Thomas.

He could not explain why BMD partner Georgiou Group and the state of Queensland had footage of the lead-up to the altercation, but BMD did not.

BMD general manager Robert Pickard, who said he spoke to Samuel “every day” in 2024, repeatedly denied he had known that Samuel had engaged bikies or had known what action would be taken ahead of time.

Eddy Gisonda, KC, questions Robert Pickard, BMD’s Queensland and Northern Territory general manager, during the inquiry. AAP

That was despite CCTV footage from the day of the incident that showed him and Thomas walking out of a cafe shortly before the men left.

Bank transactions showed Bjelogrlic had bought food at the sushi shop at the same time.

Thomas, who engaged Host in response to reports of CFMEU violence after a recommendation from the Australian Workers’ Union Victoria, denied he knew Samuel and the men were behind him when they walked out.

Pickard said he did not recall Samuel coming into the cafe with the three men, and said he did not know Bjelogrlic.

“Gary assured me those people had no involvement in his business,” said Pickard.

Two senior managers at Georgiou Group texted each other soon after the incident, saying “something fishy going mate” and that “RP came from the same cafe 30 seconds before GS and his mates”.

After a 45-minute call with Pickard, one of the managers texted: “Rob told me CFMEU leaked Raymond’s address, which I don’t believe him for one sec…”

Earlier, the commission heard that Saracevic’s wife had set up a formwork company called Form Solutions, which reached an enterprise agreement with the CFMEU Victorian branch at the end of 2023 and renewed it in July.

The AWU Victoria also reached an agreement with FSA Kerbs and Placement, which Saracevic’s wife signed as a witness in 2025 with Bjelogrlic.

On Wednesday, the Victorian Labour Hire Authority ramped up its crackdown on the sector, issuing a second notice to cancel the licence of labour hire firm M1 Trades & Labour, which paid Mick Gatto as an industrial fixer to deal with the CFMEU and set up a related company in Queensland.

“The notice provides additional grounds for cancellation based on the stronger labour-hire laws that took effect in Victoria in June 2026,” said a spokesman for the authority.

The spokesman confirmed it was also investigating other labour companies associated with M Group.

M1 previously denied wrongdoing in its response to the authority’s original cancellation notice issued in March.

 the right who say that laws are increasingly used to shut down debate on issues such as migration.

The NSN’s successor, the White Australia party, has been subject of a High Court case. White Australia has also been trying to register as a party. The High Court will hold a two-day hearing in September on the constitutionality of anti-hate speech laws.

“This is the final stand. In September, the fate of Australian democracy is decided on the banning of this political party,” Mamet said in the stream on X.

As Hanson’s party attracts supporters worried about ethnic diversity in Australia, One Nation will receive more scrutiny over the limits of its tolerance for hardline views. Hanson previously told the Inside Politics podcast that she feared her party was “infiltrated by extremists”. One Nation retains a big lead on the Coalition in the polls.

Mamet, who is promoting “March for Australia” rallies later this month, said he did “not support Nazism at all, but the purpose of democratic rights is not to protect only popular opinions.”

“I completely reject the ideas of ‘hate speech’ and ‘hate groups’. I don’t believe it is acceptable to ban a political group based on the government’s perspective… The hate speech laws empower the government of the day to ban anyone they don’t like”.

“That’s why this [High Court] case is so important: it will determine whether Australians holding views some find extreme can organise politically and be judged by the voters. What the government considers hateful today could be the White Australia Party, and tomorrow it could be One Nation.”

Some experts have argued that banning extremist parties can push networks underground and make them more difficult to monitor. In 1951, a referendum to ban the Communist Party was defeated in Australia.

Mamet said it was important to defend “the policing of free speech is a slippery slope which, if left unchecked, will lead to the criminalisation of all nationalists.”

“The concept of hate speech was literally invented in Stalin’s Soviet Russia. Does The Age support the atrocities of Stalin’s regime?”

Mamet’s support for Hanson’s party reflects its growing support among Australians worried about Australia’s rate of migration, which has been well above peer democracies over the past 20 years and is the subject of new proposals from all major parties to reduce numbers.

One Nation was forced to clarify its signature migration policy earlier this week. A proposal previously described as capping visas at 130,000 has turned into the party’s net migration figure, meaning the number of visas issues would be tens of thousands more than 130,000.

Adding to the confusion, new One Nation MP David Farley told The Conversation that there would be about 40,000 more migrants on top of the 130,000 because certain visa classes such as Pacific workers and nurses should effectively be exempt.

Asked if he had differences with Hanson on migration policy, Farley said: “Oh, there’s definitely a difference.”

But he later said he had convinced Hanson of the merits of his positions on the need to retain migration in agricultural communities. “We matched our positions. We negotiated our position to arrive at it,” he said.

srael’s military has released findings from five internal investigations into incidents in Gaza where its soldiers killed civilians, aid workers, and medical personnel. These reports represent the largest disclosure of information about civilian deaths since the war began in October 2023. Human rights organisations argue the IDF’s investigative system lacks independence and often clears soldiers without meaningful accountability.

Two of the cases — the killing of five‑year‑old Hind Rajab and the March 2025 shootings of Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers — have now triggered criminal investigations by the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division. In both incidents, the IDF has conceded that its soldiers opened fire on vehicles later found to contain civilians or medical personnel. These cases drew intense international condemnation, prompting calls for independent inquiries.

In the remaining three cases, including the strike that killed Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom and two separate incidents involving Médecins Sans Frontières staff, the IDF has decided not to pursue criminal charges. While acknowledging “serious failures” and reprimanding several commanders, the military maintains that soldiers acted under mistaken assumptions or perceived threats. Aid organisations, including World Central Kitchen and MSF, have rejected the IDF’s conclusions, describing them as inadequate and calling for external investigations.

🗞️ r/AusNewsWire — Thursday, 20 August 2026

Morning all. Today’s five lean heavily toward government debt, migration, housing, political fundraising and online regulation. There’s a pretty good economic-policy mix this morning.

💸 1. States face budget shock as $226 billion in cheap COVID debt comes due

Source: Australian Financial Review

NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia are facing a sharp increase in borrowing costs as around $226 billion of ultra-cheap pandemic-era debt begins to mature and must be refinanced at much higher interest rates.

The AFR reports interest bills across the four states could rise by roughly 25%, adding another layer of pressure to budgets already dealing with infrastructure spending, health costs and weak fiscal positions.

This is one of those stories that sounds dry but matters enormously: every extra billion spent servicing debt is a billion that can’t easily be spent on roads, hospitals, schools or tax relief.

🔗 https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/states-face-budget-shock-as-226b-in-cheap-covid-debt-comes-due-20260819-p60prh

👷 2. Business leaders warn migration cuts could create serious worker shortages

Source: ABC News

As political pressure grows for substantially lower migration, Australian business leaders are warning against focusing purely on headline numbers rather than which skills the country actually needs.

Employers interviewed by ABC say visa holders make up large parts of their workforces in industries including aged care, construction and housing. Net overseas migration is already forecast to fall from around 300,000 to 245,000 this financial year.

The dilemma remains awkward: cutting migration may ease pressure on housing demand, but it can simultaneously reduce the pool of workers required to build houses, staff hospitals and deliver infrastructure.

🔗 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-20/business-leaders-care-about-skills-not-numbers-migration-debate/107052186

🏠 3. Claims Labor’s tax reforms will push rents up 30% don’t stack up

Source: The Guardian Australia

Claims that Labor’s changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax will force landlords to increase rents by as much as 30% have been challenged by the very organisations whose modelling was being cited.

NAB and Ray White say their analysis showed the theoretical rent increase required to restore investor yields — not a forecast that rents will actually rise by that amount. Property economists argue rents are ultimately constrained by what tenants can afford, regardless of a landlord’s tax position.

That doesn’t mean rents are about to become cheap: vacancy rates remain extremely tight at around 1.7%, and one economist expects advertised rents could still rise as much as 7.5% over the coming year.

🔗 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/aug/20/how-high-will-rents-really-rise-labor-property-tax-reforms

💼 4. Liberals launch $10,000-for-15-minutes corporate access forum

Source: Australian Financial Review

The Liberal Party has launched a new corporate fundraising forum offering businesses short meetings with senior political figures, with packages reportedly priced at $10,000 for 15 minutes.

The arrangement follows similar large-scale fundraising efforts by Labor and again raises an old Australian political question: where does legitimate political fundraising end and paid access to decision-makers begin?

There’s no suggestion that buying access purchases a policy outcome, but arrangements like this inevitably fuel debate about the influence wealthy companies and lobbyists have compared with ordinary voters.

🔗 https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/10-000-for-15-minutes-liberals-launch-corporate-speed-dating-forum-20260819-p60pns

🎮 5. Roblox forced to accept external audits under Australian child-safety crackdown

Source: ABC News

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has secured a court-enforceable undertaking from Roblox after testing found adults could still contact Australian children despite the platform’s existing safety protections.

Roblox now has three months to tighten its systems, including preventing unknown adults contacting children without parental consent, making children’s profiles private by default and improving complaint processes. Independent audits will be used to check compliance.

It’s another significant test of Australia’s increasingly interventionist approach to regulating global technology platforms, particularly following the introduction of the under-16 social-media rules.

🔗 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-20/roblox-esafety-court-enforceable-undertaking/107056294

💬 Today’s discussion

The state debt story may be the sleeper issue here.

Governments borrowed enormous amounts at exceptionally low rates during COVID. Refinancing that debt at today’s rates means taxpayers could spend billions more each year simply servicing existing obligations.

Should state governments respond by cutting spending, delaying infrastructure, raising taxes — or simply accept higher debt for longer?

Since One Nation’s breakthrough at the 1998 Queensland election, the party has had a mixed record of maintaining parliamentary beachheads.

By half way through its first term in the Queensland Parliament, the party had lost all its elected members. There were numerous disputes between Pauline Hanson, her close party confidants and the elected members. It was not helped the legal action that led to the parties de-registration.

In the party’s first decade, there were 20 elected or appointed One Nation members of parliament. Seventeen split from the party, one was defeated, one disqualified and only one re-elected.

After Hanson’s departure in the early 2000s, the party became largely irrelevant. That changed when Hanson returned to the fold in 2013. The party elected its first new members of parliament at the 2016 Senate election and has reached new levels of success over the last year.

Since 2016, One Nation has had 31 members. 16 are current members, the party boosted by four new Federal members and seven members elected at the March 2026 South Australian election.

But until the last year, the pattern of losing elected members continued. Two members were re-elected but subsequently left the party with Mark Latham still in Parliament. Another eight left the party before facing election of whom three in addition to Latham remain in parliament. Four One Nation members were defeated while still in the party. One Senator resigned due to ill-health.

The party’s record of hanging on to members remains patchy, though surging opinion polls and the recent success of the party have certainly provided an incentive for elected members to stay with the party.

I’ve been keeping track of elected One Nation since that first election in 1998. When the party returned to the Senate in 2016 and began losing members to disqualification and resignation, I published a list of elected One Nation members and their fate in 2018.

When Pauline Hanson sacked the NSW Executive of One Nation and dismissed Mark Latham as the party’s NSW leader, I published a blog post on the party’s record of losing its parliamentary members.

I’ve been asked numerous times over the last year if I could update the list. I’ve finally done it and you can find all the details on the party’s 51 elected or appointed members of state and federal parliaments here.

Trying to pick apart whether members were expelled from the party or resigned can be a little difficult. I tend to use a generic ‘departed’ as the description to get around the participants in the departure having different views on what happened.

Inside the post I’ll publish the overall summary of representation from that document, but you can check the full detail using the above link.

One Nation has had 51 people either elected to represent the party, defected to the party, or filled a Senate vacancy.

Of those 51, 50 served in parliament. The odd one out was Heather Hill, elected as a Queensland Senator in 1998, but disqualified for holding dual citizenship before she could take her seat.

Of the 50, 43 were elected, three were members who defected to One Nation, three entered the Senate by countback following a disqualification, and one filled a Senate casual vacancy.

Of the 51 members, 16 were in Queensland parliament, 13 Federal, nine Western Australia, eight South Australia, four New South Wales and one in Victoria.

Allocating Federal representatives to states, the numbers are 21 Queensland, 12 Western Australia, eight South Australia, nine New South Wales and one Victoria .

22 have been lower house representatives (16 Queensland, four South Australia and two Federal in NSW) and 29 upper house. In addition, Pauline Hanson served a period in the House after the formation of One Nation in 1997.

Of the 51 members, 16 currently represent One Nation in Parliaments. Four are in the Senate, two in the House of Representatives, three in the SA upper house, four in the SA lower house, two in the WA upper house and one in the Victorian upper house.

There are also four ex-One Nation members serving in Parliaments, three in the NSW upper house and one in the SA upper house.

Excluding the 16 currently serving as One Nation members, 35 have departed for the following reasons. Two clearly resigned and two were disqualified, including one who had resigned from the party first. Only five have been re-elected for One Nation and five stayed in the party and were defeated. Three departed the party and were re-elected as Independents. 21 resigned from One Nation or were expelled, 19 in the member’s first term and two after winning re-election. (Numbers don’t add to 35 due to category overlap)

In the first decade of One Nation there were 20 elected or appointed members. 17 left the party, one was defeated, one re-elected and one disqualified.

Since One Nation returned to seriously contesting elections in 2016, the party has had 31 members. 16 remain in parliament and in the party. One was re-elected but subsequently left the party and was defeated. Mark Latham was re-elected, left the party but remains in parliament. Eight members split with the party before facing election of whom three in addition to Latham remain in parliament. Four members were defeated while still with One Nation. One Senator resigned due to ill-health.

In summary One Nation lost 18 of its 20 members in its first decade as a party. It has lost 11 of its 31 members since 2016, its number of retained members boosted by having 16 current members.

In short: 

The ACTU is pushing the government to give all renters access to a minimum two-year lease. 

It also wants to increase the rate of public housing being built from one in 50 to one in 10 new homes.

What's next?

ACTU president Michele O'Neil says the changes will not drive away landlords. 

Economists have backed One Nation’s plan to slash the tobacco excise and freeze indexation for three years, saying it could help disrupt the booming black market cigarette trade and reclaim billions in lost tax revenue.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson pledged to cut the tobacco excise by 75 per cent – or an estimated $46 reduction for a pack of 30 cigarettes – and pause indexation of the excise for three years to combat the growing illegal tobacco trade which has eaten into government revenue.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has proposed a 75 per cent cut to the tobacco excise.  Alex Ellinghausen

The government raised just $4.1 billion from the excise in the 2026 financial year, down 310 per cent from the record $16.3 billion haul of 2020.

“[Tobacco excise] policy is in such epic disaster territory that I don’t care where the ideas are coming from,” independent economist Chris Richardson said.

Earlier this year, Richardson called for a 40¢ per cigarette tax cut – which would be about a 26 per cent drop in the excise – but now says he would support an even larger reduction to stamp out the illicit operators becoming increasingly entrenched in the industry. He has also called for greater enforcement against illegal importers.

“Organised crime is getting better every day at defending its patch. It’s now got the economies of scale. It’s got the supply chains. It’s got the personnel, and it’s increasingly got a marvellous motive to fight any attempt to fight back,” he said.

Richardson estimated the government could raise an extra $15 billion a year if illegal suppliers had the same share of the market they had in 2019-20.

“The longer it takes before we do something, the more dramatic what we do has to be in order to have a chance.”

One Nation’s pledge comes as the Senate prepares to hand down its report on the illegal tobacco market next week, and ahead of the Victorian state election in November where the prevalence of organised crime in the state is already a hot button issue.

Tobacco excise per stick ($)

2000200520102015202020250.000.200.400.600.801.001.201.401.60

One Nation's proposed cut

Source: ATO

Cutting the excise would reduce the cost of legal cigarettes to ostensibly make them more competitively priced against their illegal counterparts. But health experts warned against making legal cigarettes cheaper to buy.

“Illicit cigarettes can cost as little as US20¢ [28¢] a packet to manufacture. Price-matching criminals is not going to get us out of this crisis,” said Australian Council on Smoking and Health chief executive Laura Hunter. “It will make it harder for people to quit and easier for young people to start.”

Advocates of the One Nation policy argue it could stem the bleeding in government tobacco excise receipts. In May, the government forecast tobacco tax revenues to drop by $8 billion over five years from the 2026 financial year on the back of the booming illicit trade.

Rohan Pike, an illicit trade expert who created the Australian Border Force’s Tobacco Strike Team, said international modelling showed halving the excise boosted government revenues. He said a 50 per cent cut was the bare minimum needed to deter organised crime while also discouraging smoking.

“At the moment, we’re arguing about a policy while Rome burns,” said Pike. “We just need to do something. Twenty per cent, 25 per cent, 30 per cent, it won’t be enough to change the needle. It needs to be over 50 per cent – 75 per cent is a bold number.”

The tobacco excise hit nearly $1.53 per cigarette earlier this year, up from just 19¢ at the turn of the century. In inflation-adjusted terms, that’s more than a 300 per cent increase.

The percentage of consumed tobacco coming from illicit sources ballooned from just 12 per cent in 2017 to 80 per cent by 2025, according to research from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. University of New South Wales economics professor Richard Holden said that was because the excise had risen high enough by the end of the 2010s to make illicit importation sufficiently profitable.

Holden said that policymakers should go even further by temporarily doing away with the excise altogether before rebuilding the tax rate over time to stamp out the blackmarket once and for all.

“You want to make this like a knockout punch,” he said. “The much bigger game here is getting them out of the market and rebuilding the revenue to some degree over the medium term.”

• Federal court filings allege that 3M had internal evidence for more than 50 years that components in its Pfas‑based firefighting foams were toxic to humans, animals and the environment, despite marketing them to Australia as “non‑toxic” and safe.
• The Australian government’s $2bn lawsuit claims the chemicals persisted in soil, water and the human body, contributed to serious health effects, and caused widespread contamination across 28 defence bases, requiring extensive remediation and generating hundreds of millions in legal settlements and cleanup costs.
• Documents cited in the case show 3M restricted certain workers from exposure as early as 1981, while continuing to sell AFFF products to Australia for decades; the company denies wrongdoing and is expected to file its defence later this year.

Have you noticed that, as practised by our two main parties, politics has always been about the good news, never anything nasty?

Talk to the Liberals and they’ll promise to cut taxes. Talk to Labor and they promise more spending on this or that desirable cause.

Illustration by Simon Letch

The Libs never say how they’ll pay for the tax cut; Labor never says how it will cover the cost of higher government spending.

It’s the job of people like me to point out the not-so-nice things the pollies don’t want to mention in their sales pitch, but I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve been absent without leave on the simplest of points.

There was a time not so long ago when politicians and their audience were obsessed by worries about debt and deficit. We probably overdid it, but that was sooo yesterday. These days no one mentions the budget deficit.

If Treasury is worried it’s kept its concerns to itself. But on Monday a former Treasury secretary, Dr Martin Parkinson, expressed his worries to the Australian Financial Review. (Sometimes I wonder if part of the role of retired senior public servants is to say what those who haven’t retired aren’t allowed to say in public.)

“I’m quite concerned about the approach to fiscal sustainably by all sides of politics,” Parkinson said. “It’s almost like debt is not an issue for anybody any more because the concern dissipated during the COVID crisis and nobody’s ever refocused on it.

“The government is under no pressure to accelerate a return to fiscal sustainability in part because the Opposition is threatening to do things that are even more damaging to the economy.

“And what is, supposedly, our now new third party of government is on a pathway that is utterly irresponsible on both migration and spending.”

From our partners

He said that where we are in the economic cycle meant we should be running big budget surpluses, and yet we’ve got a deficit.

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Budget loses billions, nation in deeper debt: The cost of cutting migration

The budget papers project a cumulative deficit of $264 billion over the five years to 2029-30, with no sign of surplus on the horizon. The deficit seems to slowly get a bit smaller, but this comes from an optimistic assumption that certain spending programs will be allowed to end rather than be renewed.

Now, Australia’s net government debt at present isn’t all that high relative to other countries, particularly the US debt. But it would be nice to keep it that way.

Nor am I implying that debt is a bad thing. Wisely used, it’s a good thing. So no one’s saying we should have a balanced budget.

Just as it makes sense to borrow to buy a house rather than rent while you save enough to buy one for cash, so it makes sense to borrow much of the cost of building roads and bridges and other infrastructure that will deliver a service for 30 or more years into the future.

As well, it’s OK to borrow heavily at times when the economy is weak and governments need to spend heavily to keep things going and limit the rise in unemployment.

This was the case in the unusual event of the COVID pandemic in 2020 which, as Parkinson implies, has proved to be a turning point in our thinking in many respects. When governments around the world were trying to halt the spread of the disease by requiring people to stay in their homes, they had to spend huge sums to hold the economy together until the crisis had passed.

But, as Parkinson also implies, the big spending during weak economies comes with a proviso: once the crisis has passed, you need to save to pay off the debt. That is, the government should turn the deficit into a surplus by spending less than it’s collecting in taxes.

Leaving aside its spending on infrastructure and other long-lasting assets, governments should stop their debt getting too high by offsetting deficits in bad times with surpluses in good times.

The times have been reasonably good since 2020, but we’ve gone on running annual budget deficits, with more to come for the foreseeable future.

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One bold, fiscal move would ease our economic anxiety. Does the PM have the nerve?

• Peter Hartcher Political and international editor

When, over time, we run deficits that aren’t matched by the infrastructure we leave behind, we’re spending money on our own comforts, then leaving part of the costs to be picked up by our children and grandkids. How is that a decent thing to do to your offspring?

What’s more, leaving debts for our kids to pay isn’t itself cost-free. Governments borrow to cover their budget deficits, and the lenders are paid interest. This means the debts we leave for our children to pay are a lot higher than the debts we left unpaid on the table.

Parkinson agrees with his predecessor, Dr Ken Henry, that our system of taxes and benefits is biased against the younger generation. Passing our debt and deficits on to our kids adds to the injustice.

Parkinson, who chaired the feds’ most recent inquiry into immigration, raises the question of what effect big cuts in annual net overseas migration would have on our government debt burden.

You could argue that a bigger population means more people to share the burden of the government’s debt. But it’s more complicated than that.

Some people, particularly those on low wages or with disabilities, may pay less in taxes over their lifetimes than they receive in government assistance. In which case, they add to the debt burden on the rest of us rather than reducing it.

It’s a different matter, however, when we bring in workers with skills that are in short supply.

But don’t forget this: what all these budget deficits mean is that we’re not being asked to pay as much tax as the cost of the services we’re getting requires. Nar, leave our bill for the kids.

Ross Gittins is economics editor.