Speaker 1: You can listen to the Front on your smart speaker
Speaker 1: every morning to hear the latest episode. Just say play
Speaker 1: the news from the Australian. From the Australian, here's what's
Speaker 1: on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Tuesday, October eighth,
Speaker 1: another day, another dramatic shift in language from the Federal
Speaker 1: government on Israel. Health Minister Mark Butler has revealed his
Speaker 1: Jewish heritage and declared only Jews have suffered the brunt
Speaker 1: of social division since the October seven, twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: Hamas attack on Israel. That story and all the fallout
Speaker 1: is live right now at the Australian dot com Au. Today,
Speaker 1: The Australian's national editor, debnih Shanahan says Anthony Albanezi's shifting
Speaker 1: to a war footing. He's trying to fix his stance
Speaker 1: on Israel and turn the heat on the Greens as
Speaker 1: the next federal election approaches at speed. That's today's story.
Speaker 2: This will changed housing in Australia. It will benefit so
Speaker 2: many Australians.
Speaker 3: I want kids to have a childhood. That's why we'll
Speaker 3: introduce legislation this year for a minimum age for social media.
Speaker 3: Together we can get this done.
Speaker 1: You're paid super on your sick leave, you paid super
Speaker 1: on your annual leave, and there is no reason why
Speaker 1: it shouldn't be on paid parental leave too.
Speaker 2: It shows why it's really important to have a tough
Speaker 2: environmental regulator, and it's one of the reasons that we're
Speaker 2: establishing a National Environment Protection Agency.
Speaker 3: And tomorrow, together we begin the work of building a
Speaker 3: better future. He's one of the few people who has
Speaker 3: led a party from opposition into government. A handful of
Speaker 3: leaders have actually done that, so it is a great
Speaker 3: achievement for Antony Alberanzi.
Speaker 1: Dennis Shanahan is The Australian's National editor.
Speaker 3: Time has basically run out for the Albanesi government. The
Speaker 3: agenda that they set out. They've achieved a fair bit
Speaker 3: of their own aims, but a lot of that actually
Speaker 3: carries with it baggage from other sections of the community.
Speaker 1: An election must be held by late May. That's more
Speaker 1: than six months away, but when you start looking at
Speaker 1: the logistics, it's not that long at all. Election campaigns
Speaker 1: have to run for at least thirty three days from
Speaker 1: when the writs are issued that is when the starting
Speaker 1: gun is fired to voting day, so that means the
Speaker 1: PAM would have to call a May election in late
Speaker 1: March or April, and that means time is running out
Speaker 1: to get things done in Parliament.
Speaker 3: Look, I think that from what we've seen in the
Speaker 3: lead up to this final October sitting and then the
Speaker 3: final weeks in November is the government realizes it's not
Speaker 3: going to get much past the Greens and Coalition in
Speaker 3: the Senate.
Speaker 1: Dennis, the government's biggest promise that most Australians would remember
Speaker 1: was housing. It got one big piece through Parliament, the
Speaker 1: Housing Australia Future Fund, but now it's struggling to get
Speaker 1: support for two big policies, a tax incentive for landlords
Speaker 1: called build to Rent and an equity sharing program called
Speaker 1: help to Buy. That's where the government kicks in part
Speaker 1: of the purchase price and owns a stake in the property.
Speaker 1: What's going on with those bits of the legislation.
Speaker 3: They're not going to get a gender through. So what
Speaker 3: they're doing is saying, right, we are now going to
Speaker 3: put it up again and say to the Greens, we
Speaker 3: are going to embarrass you from time to time as
Speaker 3: every time you vote against this, we are going to
Speaker 3: tell the people you are against a housing bill which
Speaker 3: will give more housing to people on lower incomes. It's
Speaker 3: a political stage where at now I think we've passed
Speaker 3: the legislative stage.
Speaker 1: Anthony Albanez, he prides himself on being a parliamentary tactician.
Speaker 1: Housing is something that the Greens say they want to
Speaker 1: fix for Australians. So what exactly has gone wrong? Why
Speaker 1: haven't they been able to bring the Greens with them?
Speaker 3: Well, the Greens have wanted a whole series of add ons,
Speaker 3: particularly rent control. The government can't wear rent control. They
Speaker 3: flirted with doing away with negative gears during capital gains tax,
Speaker 3: and these are the things the Greens want and the
Speaker 3: Greens can say, look, Labor is just the same as
Speaker 3: the coalition and fight in these Green held and labor
Speaker 3: seats that the Green vote will grow as a result
Speaker 3: of that. Out in the wider electorate, it'll work against
Speaker 3: the Greens, but it's only in these key seats. So
Speaker 3: I think what we'll see is the Greens just say
Speaker 3: we're going to stick with this. Let labour try and
Speaker 3: embarrass us. Wheell trial embarrass labor in the seats where
Speaker 3: it counts.
Speaker 1: This coming Monday, October fourteen, it'll be a year since
Speaker 1: the Voice referendum.
Speaker 4: This is a very sad moment in the country's history.
Speaker 4: I think it will be at least two generations before
Speaker 4: Australians are capable of putting their colonial hatreds behind them
Speaker 4: and acknowledging that we exist.
Speaker 1: Dennis, could we say that the debate was worth having?
Speaker 1: This is maybe what Anthony Albanize might say that he
Speaker 1: put the question that we ventilated the issues, we had
Speaker 1: a big national conversation about it and we got to
Speaker 1: a resolution. Is that how you would say it? Or
Speaker 1: was it actually a complete disaster?
Speaker 3: My view is it was a complete disaster, particularly from
Speaker 3: Antheina Albanese's view. It was the first promise he made
Speaker 3: on election night and he did it in such a
Speaker 3: way that it never had a chance of getting off
Speaker 3: the ground. The way the government handled the Indigenous Voice
Speaker 3: to Parliament referendum was actually a disgrace. They did not
Speaker 3: try and convince people, they didn't try to bring people
Speaker 3: with them. There was no constitutional convention that there was
Speaker 3: no referendum convention. There was no real debate. It was
Speaker 3: just telling people what they should do and if they
Speaker 3: didn't vote, they were racists. Now, I think that this
Speaker 3: was a failure obviously because it didn't get up, but
Speaker 3: it was also a bigger failure for Labor because it
Speaker 3: trained people to vote against something that Labour supported. Now
Speaker 3: that's a very dangerous element for the government going into
Speaker 3: the election.
Speaker 1: That big sweeping statement on election night from Anthony Albanez.
Speaker 1: He said that he would implement the Ulary Statement from
Speaker 1: the Heart in full. Now, of course that would include
Speaker 1: a Macarata commission, a truth telling process and progress towards
Speaker 1: a treaty with Indigenous people. Do you see either of
Speaker 1: those being part of the election agenda next time? Or
Speaker 1: is it We're not going to hear about this anymore?
Speaker 3: I think it's gone. It's as gone as far as
Speaker 3: Linda Bernie's gone back burner. Forget about it. We're not
Speaker 3: going to talk about it. He's already ruled out any
Speaker 3: possibility of any consideration of a Republican referendum. He has
Speaker 3: learnt his lesson about referendums.
Speaker 1: Coming up. Why is the government changing its tune on
Speaker 1: Israel now? As Parliament Since this week, all the action
Speaker 1: will be live at the Australian dot com dot au,
Speaker 1: complete with analysis from our experts like Dennis To put
Speaker 1: it all in context. Join us at the Australian dot
Speaker 1: Com dot u. It's a year now, Dennis, that we've
Speaker 1: been living in the post October seven world. That is
Speaker 1: a new conflict in the Middle East, a new generation
Speaker 1: learning what it's like to see that part of the
Speaker 1: world torn apart. How have you seen the government's messaging
Speaker 1: evolve over this year?
Speaker 3: It was appalling to begin with, it only got worse
Speaker 3: and we're seeing signs now that they may have realized
Speaker 3: that they've actually failed on a whole group of principles,
Speaker 3: which is hurting their credibility in the public. More generally,
Speaker 3: this is about more than just Israel or Gaza or
Speaker 3: Lebanon or Hesbala or Iran. It has raised the element
Speaker 3: of anti Semitism in society and we have seen real division.
Speaker 3: We are seeing a split in the social fabric. The
Speaker 3: government is being held responsible for this well, and beyond
Speaker 3: the foreign affairs area, what we are seeing is the
Speaker 3: need for reality to take hold in the labor government.
Speaker 3: So I think we'll see a big change.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in the past two days we've seen Richard Miles
Speaker 1: say that Israel does have a right to respond, and
Speaker 1: then we've seen health Minister Mark Butler give a very
Speaker 1: personal and quite impassioned speech about his own family heritage
Speaker 1: and to say that it's only Jewish Australians who have
Speaker 1: suffered the extreme effects of antisemitism in the past year.
Speaker 1: Do you think that that means that they're less worried
Speaker 1: than they were a few months ago about the impact
Speaker 1: that kind of language might have in seats in Western Sydney,
Speaker 1: for example, where there are a lot of Muslim Australians
Speaker 1: who care about this issue.
Speaker 3: The polling on the protests has demonstrated a much wider
Speaker 3: opposition and discontent with the government's position on Israel, not
Speaker 3: because of the foreign policy ins and outs of right
Speaker 3: to respond, the right to defend, or where you can
Speaker 3: do it, or which rivit you can stop at. It's
Speaker 3: about how it's affected Australian society. And what Mark Butler
Speaker 3: is saying is what people have been saying for months.
Speaker 3: Of course, it is not about having an equivalence between
Speaker 3: Islamophobia and anti Semitism. So what Mark Butler has done
Speaker 3: is actually mouthed what people in the public have been
Speaker 3: telling the government for months, and that is this is
Speaker 3: window dressing. And Mark Butler has called that out, and
Speaker 3: from my understanding this is a wider view within the
Speaker 3: government that it is not Muslims who are suffering in
Speaker 3: the large, it is anti Semitism which is the problem,
Speaker 3: and we must stand against that. This is a big shift.
Speaker 3: They can't deny it. And the question remains is the
Speaker 3: policy that Penny Wong put out which so upset the
Speaker 3: Israelis that there should be an idea that a set
Speaker 3: timetable be applied to the formation of a Palestinian state,
Speaker 3: with or without the cooperation that is Israel. Is that
Speaker 3: still policy, That's the policy question that has to be addressed.
Speaker 3: What senior ministers are telling me is that at least
Speaker 3: it's better late than never. But this is so much
Speaker 3: of the problem of the Albanese government that it takes
Speaker 3: them a year, literally a year, to come to a
Speaker 3: conclusion which has been obvious. They react eventually when they're
Speaker 3: pushed to a reaction, but it's too slow and it's
Speaker 3: not good enough. Yes, it might help them now in
Speaker 3: the next five months towards the election, but boy, it
Speaker 3: was hard work getting them there.
Speaker 1: Dennis Shanahan is The Australian's National editor. All the fun
Speaker 1: of federal politics is live twenty four seven at the
Speaker 1: Australian dot com dot Au. Join our subscribers to make
Speaker 1: sure you're always the first to know