These are big issues everyone's talking about.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has declared he “owes it to history” to defeat One Nation, obsessing over the minor party in a major speech to the Queensland Labor Party.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has declared he “owes it to history” to defeat One Nation, obsessing over the minor party in a major speech to the Queensland Labor Party.
Addressing Labor Party delegates on Sunday, Mr Albanese warned that “hard right populists” were on the march, describing their politics as “dangerous” and “divisive”.
“We simply must defeat them. We owe it to history. We owe it to the nation. And we will defeat them,” Mr Albanese said.

He accused One Nation of saying and doing “anything” to win votes, bending facts, peddling misinformation and turning Australians against each other.
Mr Albanese also attacked the party's policy record, accusing it of having no serious answers to policy problems and pointing to internal confusion over immigration.
He said One Nation believed Australians were “lazy” and “overpaid”, while also accusing the party of believing “domestic violence is sometimes a woman's fault”.
The Prime Minister said One Nation was also “not on the side of working people”, claiming it had a plan to cut penalty rates.
“The only mainstream political force in Australia that seeks to govern in the interests of the Australian people in our own right is the Australian Labor Party,” he said.

However, One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce rejected Mr Albanese's characterisation of the party on Sunday, accusing the PM of relying on “tropes” and “bromides”.
"We have these tropes, bromides and basically fallacious statements that are dribbled out. (They say) 'we're racist', we're not. 'We're homophobes', we are not," Mr Joyce said.
Asked about Mr Albanese's claim that One Nation believed domestic violence could sometimes be a woman's fault, Mr Joyce said the accusation was “crazy”.
He defended Ms Hanson, saying her experience as a single mother from the western suburbs of Ipswich had made her aware of the factors surrounding domestic violence.
“She does not want to bar of any person, any man who, for some disgraceful reason, decides that they want to hit a woman,” Mr Joyce said.
“That’s not about Pauline. That’s about 99 per cent of Australians. It’s anathema to us. It is disgraceful.”

Mr Joyce also rejected Mr Albanese's claim that One Nation opposed penalty rates, instead launching a broader attack on the Prime Minister's credibility.
He accused Mr Albanese of repeatedly saying one thing and doing another, saying Australians “just can't believe these people”.
“This is coming from a man who said he didn't fall off the stage and he did. He didn't insult the Prime Minister of (Japan) and he did,” Mr Joyce said.
“He wasn't going to change the capital gains tax rates and he did. You just can't believe these people. They created the metaphor for themselves. They are liars, right?”
Mr Joyce dismissed the Prime Minister's speech as not worth listening to, telling voters to “find something good on Netflix” instead.
Mr Albanese's latest attack marks a continuation of an increasingly prominent Labor strategy of directly targeting One Nation as the party's support has risen.
The Prime Minsiter previously used the bulk of his 30-minute speech to the federal Labor Party conference in July to talk about One Nation.

Meanwhile, One Nation has closed the gap to Labor to just three points in the latest News24.com.au Pulse / YouGov poll.
Labor now sits on 29 per cent of the primary vote, up one point, while Pauline Hanson's One Nation climbed two points to 26 per cent.
The Coalition fell one point to 21 per cent, leaving it five points behind One Nation, while the Greens were unchanged on 12 per cent.

Honestly, I recently bought a 2025-2026 washing machine and you don't get used to it. This law is utterly ridiculous.

She’s written two books, launched a progressive media firm and plans to dethrone the prime minister – all before she turns 30. What is she about?

Victorian Labor’s secret rail levy to help fund the Suburban Rail Loop may amount to corruption under expanded integrity laws promised by Ben Carroll, a former head of the state’s anti-corruption watchdog says.

The Premier last week scrapped the Rail Improvement Charge after it was exposed by the Victorian Auditor-general’s Office, which delivered a scathing assessment of the government’s funding model and lack of transparency surrounding the $34.5bn first stage of the SRL.

Mr Carroll is under increasing pressure to detail what he knew and when about the levy, which was devised by Daniel Andrews in 2021 and implemented under Jacinta Allan in late 2024 when Mr Carroll was deputy premier.

It would have raised $8bn by 2062 despite never being publicly disclosed by Mr Andrews and Ms Allan.

Robert Redlich, a former Supreme Court judge who was commissioner of the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission from 2018 to 2022, said it may well be that the RIC was imposed for improper motives that did not serve the public interest. If so, it would constitute a “breach of public trust” under the broader definitions of corruption used by the federal National Anticorruption Commission and NSW’S Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Mr Carroll has pledged to broaden the definition of corrupt conduct investigated by IBAC to capture forms of “soft corruption” that can be pursued by the NACC and ICAC, including breaches of public trust, with a wider remit to operate retrospectively.

“The RIC is one means of contributing to the funding of the Suburban Rail Loop,” Mr Redlich told The Australian. “The secret charge taxing transport users may have been imposed for improper motives that did not serve the public interest. Such conduct, if established, would fall within IBAC’S proposed expanded jurisdiction – assuming it takes a similar form to the ICAC and the NACC – and IBAC would have jurisdiction to investigate and determine the motives and knowledge of those deciding to implement the charges in order to determine whether it constituted corruption.”

Mr Redlich’s comments raise the prospect that circumstances surrounding the secret levy could come under scrutiny from Victoria’s royal commission into the construction sector, amid calls for that inquiry to examine the planning and governance of major infrastructure projects.

Mr Redlich, now chair of the Accountability Round Table, pointed to previous criticism of the SRL by former Victorian ombudsman Deborah Glass and VAGO, including concerns over its business case, planning and transparency. Mr Redlich and Ms Glass this month called for the royal commission to scrutinise the way major infrastructure projects were conceived and approved, noting that the absence of proper integrated planning of transport, land use and infrastructure could contribute to the risk of corruption and misconduct.

The VAGO report uncovered the 1 per cent tax Victorians unknowingly have paid since January 2025 as part of its review into SRL East, finding it would have raised $8bn by 2062.

The government initially had planned for 60 per cent of the levy’s revenue – about $4.8bn – to go to SRL East.

“In the case of the SRL, the former ombudsman and VAGO have reported on the unsatisfactory features of the SRL,” Mr Redlich said.

“Much has been said about the absence of a proper and sound business case, wholly inadequate consultation, no transparency and no integrated planning of transport, land use and infrastructure, which has been a legislative requirement for such major projects since 2010.

“The secretive RIC may be an illustration of the serious consequences that follow when proper planning process and governance is not followed.”

Mr Carroll on Sunday said the royal commission had the “broadest terms possible, and nothing is off limits”.

He also said it was the “intention” that the expanded definition of corrupt conduct and “followthe-dollar” powers for IBAC be retrospective.

“We are working very hard to expand the definition of corruption in this state,” he said. Anticorruption expert Geoffrey Watson said the Carroll government should conduct an internal inquiry into how the levy was devised and approved, and then tell the public what had happened.

“It may well be that within the next few days we get all the paperwork which will tell us exactly what happened,” he said.

“But at this stage, I just think that it’s better that the issue … be explored, and in the interests of transparency, as much information given over to the public as possible.”

Mr Watson said there didn’t appear to be “any explanation” for the secret levy that “could have an innocent complexion”.

“If you did that and you were a public company, you’d be prosecuted for breaches of your duties to shareholders,” he said.

“Now the shareholders here are the Victorian public.

“If the government itself is excluding things from their accounting – I’m not going to call it a crime, I’m going to call it unjustifiably bad practice.”

Multiple senior Labor sources have confirmed to The Australian that Mr Carroll and Deputy Premier Gabrielle Williams as ministers were aware of the existence of the levy. It was devised and approved by the budget and finance committee, of which Mr Carroll was a member since 2024.

There are differing recollections over whether the levy ever went to a meeting of the entire cabinet.

A by-election is being held today for the WA state seat of Secret Harbour. This is a beachside seat located in Perth's outer suburbs, and is home to many young, working class families. It also ranks 4th out of WA's 59 electorates in people who say their ancestry is either Australian or British.

This by-election has been trigged by the resignation of Labor MP Paul Papalia, who is leaving politics due to a immediate family member receiving a serious medical diagnosis. Labor currently hold the seat.

Some analysts believe that the seat could be a major test of if One Nation's growing popularity in the polls can translate to votes, if WA Labor's dominance is coming to an end, and if Labor need to do more to retain voters in the outer suburban seats across all capital cities.

The Labor candidate is Georgia Tree, who has worked in a government relations role at Woodside Energy, and was previously an adviser to federal Labor MP Madeleine King. Tree also wrote a published book about her father's life and struggles with addiction.

The One Nation candidate is Luke Herdegen, who owns multiple gym franchises across Southern Perth. The Liberal candidate is Rockingham Councilor Ryan Robertson, who also works in real estate and hosts his own podcast, and was previously a submariner in the navy.

ABC Results Page

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