‘This is not question time’: Chalmers clashes with O’Brien at economic reform summit
Tom McIlroy
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, and the Coalition frontbencher Ted O’Brien have clashed at the government’s economic reform roundtable, in a debate about Labor’s spending commitments in the federal budget.
Thursday is the final day of the roundtable event, and discussions are focused on budget sustainability and tax reform. Speakers including Treasury boss, Jenny Wilkinson, and the Grattan Institute chief executive, Aruna Sathanapally, are addressing the meeting.
Outside the cabinet room, O’Brien said he told Chalmers should set spending limits for the new parliamentary term, and stop adding to the budget deficit:
I set a test for the treasurer today to stop the spending spree, which starts with the introduction of quantifiable fiscal rules.
O’Brien did not elaborate on the debate but participants said the back and forth was heated, before Chalmers told O’Brien “this is not question time”.
The NSW treasurer, Daniel Mookhey, intervened in the back and forth and suggested the meeting should return to possible reform options going forward.
Speaking during a break in the roundtable, the ACTU secretary, Sally McManus, said participants wanted Chalmers and O’Brien to stick to the meeting agenda and avoid a political fight in the cabinet room. She said that behaviour was better suited to parliament:
There was a bit of a political exchange that went on that felt a bit like question time.
It was like, ‘OK, guys, you can do that in question time, the rest of us here don’t really get to do that’.
Key events
Penry Buckley
NSW SES responds to more incidents as roads close and communities watch flood advisories
The NSW SES and the Bureau of Meteorology are giving a joint press conference about the flood risk from today’s continued heavy rainfall.
NSW SES assistant deputy commissioner Debbie Platz said the SES has now responded to more than 500 incidents, including five flood rescues.
Platz said the weather system is now impacting “most of the east coast of NSW and into the north-west area of the state”.
We are starting now to see road closures across many parts of NSW, and these road closures are going to cause isolation to many communities. So again, we urge everybody in NSW, in these impacted areas, to monitor our website very closely to see what is going to impact you.
Caitlin Cassidy
Pocock says ANU’s leadership has taken ‘sledgehammer’ to the university
Pocock accused the ANU’s management of taking a “sledgehammer” to the institution. Addressing the rally, Pocock said he would “continue to fight” alongside students and staff to push for change:
We have to continue to push for better governance, for more transparency, and for a way forward that actually takes into account the students and staff here and the very people who have built this university … It’s been really hard to watch the way that council and senior leadership have gone about the so-called proposals, and the way that they’ve taken a sledgehammer to this university.
Earlier this month, Pocock called for ANU’s chancellor, Julie Bishop, to step aside until an ongoing review by the regulator into the university council’s culture and oversight of its financial position was completed.
A spokesperson for ANU said it acknowledged implementing widespread change was “significant to our operations, our services, and most critically of all, our people and the fabric of our campus” but did not comment on requests for Bishop to step aside.
All future changes under Renew ANU will be achieved without involuntary redundancies, and no further change plans will be released in 2025. We know this period of transformation hasn’t been easy and we thank and acknowledge the work and dedication of our community to support ANU during this time of change.
Caitlin Cassidy
David Pocock fronting student-led rally at ANU against job cuts
Independent senator for the ACT, David Pocock, is fronting a student-led rally at the Australian National University ANU today protesting against job cuts and ongoing restructuring at the embattled institution.
The protest, which kicked off at 11am on ANU’s Kambri Lawns, comes after the university announced on Wednesday there would be no further involuntary redundancies as management seeks to find $250m in annual savings. Students will be calling for ANU to cease going ahead with the existing proposed job cuts, estimated at about 130 by the National Tertiary Education Union, and for the government to commit to more funding for higher education.
Last month, about 100 students gathered to protest against the proposed changes, which include the disestablishment of the Australian National Dictionary Centre, the Centre for European studies, the Humanities Research Centre and the ANU School of Music.
A spokesperson for ANU said they knew it had been a “challenging period of change” in the community and implementing “change of this scale is significant to our operations, our services, and most critically of all, our people and the fabric of our campus”.
The university has reached an important milestone by achieving $59.9m in savings to date towards the salary reduction target of $100m. This brings us a step closer to returning the university to a financially sustainable footing.
‘This is not question time’: Chalmers clashes with O’Brien at economic reform summit
Tom McIlroy
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, and the Coalition frontbencher Ted O’Brien have clashed at the government’s economic reform roundtable, in a debate about Labor’s spending commitments in the federal budget.
Thursday is the final day of the roundtable event, and discussions are focused on budget sustainability and tax reform. Speakers including Treasury boss, Jenny Wilkinson, and the Grattan Institute chief executive, Aruna Sathanapally, are addressing the meeting.
Outside the cabinet room, O’Brien said he told Chalmers should set spending limits for the new parliamentary term, and stop adding to the budget deficit:
I set a test for the treasurer today to stop the spending spree, which starts with the introduction of quantifiable fiscal rules.
O’Brien did not elaborate on the debate but participants said the back and forth was heated, before Chalmers told O’Brien “this is not question time”.
The NSW treasurer, Daniel Mookhey, intervened in the back and forth and suggested the meeting should return to possible reform options going forward.
Speaking during a break in the roundtable, the ACTU secretary, Sally McManus, said participants wanted Chalmers and O’Brien to stick to the meeting agenda and avoid a political fight in the cabinet room. She said that behaviour was better suited to parliament:
There was a bit of a political exchange that went on that felt a bit like question time.
It was like, ‘OK, guys, you can do that in question time, the rest of us here don’t really get to do that’.
Adeshola Ore
Chrysanthou says Lee failed to take into account Higgins’ contemporaneous complaints
Sue Chrysanthou SC, says Justice Michael Lee’s criticism of the program’s allegation of a political cover-up of the alleged rape failed to take into account Brittany Higgins’ contemporaneous complaints.
She says material issued by the prime minister’s office in 2021 also confirmed “most of what Ms Higgins” said regarding her contemporaneous complaints about the alleged rape.
Chrysanthou says by the time of broadcast, Lisa Wilkinson and her producer Angus Llewellyn had “no doubt” that there were contemporaneous complaints to the police, to the minister (Linda Reynolds) and to the rape crisis centre about the allegation:
They had given Mr Lehrmann an opportunity to deny that that had occurred. As a matter of caution they didn’t name him, given they didn’t hear back from him, and that wasn’t the point of their story anyway.
Adeshola Ore
Chrysanthou says Wilkinson was convinced Lehrmann would respond to questions
Sue Chrysanthou SC, says Lisa Wilkinson understood her producer Angus Llewellyn had sent questions to Bruce Lehrmann about the rape allegation three days before the program was aired on 15 February 2021.
Chrysanthou says her client was not part of the decision about the timing of the questions sent to Lehrmann:
She was so convinced that he might respond, she was preparing interview questions.
In my client’s mind, she’s sitting there in her makeup chair, drafting interview questions in case Mr Lhermann decides to speak. That was her state of mind.
Chrysanthou says Wilkinson, who agreed in the witness box there were no issues on the timing of questions sent to Lehrmann, had “no power to change it.”
Chrysanthou says no one else who was sent questions, including “busy ministers” and “political operatives”, complained about the timeframe to respond:
The “factual dispute” is that Lehrmann claims he did not see the questions before broadcast.
This was the one issue, uncorroborated by any document, that the trial judge accepted Mr Lehrmann on.
Penry Buckley
More ‘watch and act’ alerts issued for NSW amid heavy rainfall
The NSW SES has issued additional “watch and act” warnings for communities across northern NSW and the Central Coast.
Residents of Yarramalong, 36km north of Gosford, have now been warned moderate to heavy rainfall could cause flooding along the Wyong River.
In the last hour, additional watch and act warnings have been issued for the north-central town of Gunnedah, and the Tamworth suburb of Calala, with residents of both told to prepare to isolate.
They join an existing “warning and act” warning for Goangra, where heavy rainfall brings the risk of flooding on the Namoi River.
The NSW SES now has 33 warnings in place across the state.
Unions chief says agreement with tech industry on use of creative content in AI a ‘breakthrough’
Patrick Commins
Unions and the leading tech industry lobby group have agreed to work together on a model for payment for the use of creative content in training artificial intelligence.
Speaking to reporters this morning at the sidelines of the third and final day of the economic reform roundtable, Sally McManus, the secretary of the ACTU, described yesterday’s agreement with the Tech Council of Australia as a “breakthrough”:
There was discussion with the Tech Council and ACTU about wanting to address the issue of paying creatives, journalists and academics for their data (and) their creative work that they do.
That’s quite a significant shift, and it’s one we really welcome.
McManus said tech companies were already “rushing ahead’ in their exploitation of content to train large language models.
They’ll be crawling all your data. And people whose livelihoods depend on their creative output deserve not to have that stolen from them.
And so we’re committed to doing everything we can to address that. It was, I think, a big thing for the Tech Council to step up and say, ‘This is something we’re prepared to work on with you.
McManus said that she continued to advocate for an overarching AI act to address the potential risks from the technology, but that business groups remained opposed to such a measure.
Still, there was more commonality on the broader challenges of AI than she anticipated going into yesterday’s sessions.
None of us want to see AI used in a way that’s going to destroy jobs. None of us want to see AI leading to the, you know, theft, as is happening now, of the work of creatives and journalists and also academics.
The Tech Council has been approached for comment.
Lehrmann appeal: Sue Chrysanthou says Lee was ‘distracted by the so-called cover-up’
Adeshola Ore
Bruce Lehrmann is appealing Justice Michael Lee’s April 2024 judgment, which found the former Liberal staffer was not defamed by Lisa Wilkinson and Network 10 when The Project broadcast an interview with Brittany Higgins in 2021 in which she alleged she was raped in Parliament House.
Sue Chrysanthou SC, for Wilkinson, says Lee was “distracted by the so-called cover-up” alleged in the broadcast. She said:
The reason we lost section 30 is because His Honour could not accept that enough was done on this so called corrupt conduct of cover-up.
Chrysanthou said Lee concluded the Network 10 broadcast demonstrated the allegation of rape was the “minor theme” while the alleagtion of a cover-up was the “major theme.”
Chrysanthou says this is an acceptance of the fact the program was “not really about Mr Lehrmann”.
The appeal, expected to finish on Friday, is before the federal court’s full court of justices, Michael Wigney, Craig Colvin and Wendy Abraham.
More on the men missing from a vehicle that crashed into a river north of Sydney
NSW police say police divers are on scene and will begin a search for two men missing after a car drove into a river north of Sydney late last night. The accident took place about 20km north of Wisemans Ferry.
One of the missing men is in his 20s and the other is in his 50s. Another man in his 20s was able to escape the vehicle. Police say they believe the trio are a father and his two sons.
Natasha May
NSW minister says inquiry into health system in western Sydney not necessary
Carter pushed Park on whether he would support an inquiry into the health system in western Sydney. Park said he did not because his government had already initiated a royal commission – the special commission of inquiry into healthcare funding.
Park outlined what was being done for western Sydney, but acknowledged there is “more work to do”:
One, we are rolling out ratios of that hospital, resulting in a significantly increased number of staff.
Two, we are expanding beds at both Mount Druitt and Blacktown to the tune of $120 million investment 60 increases in beds between both hospitals.
Three we will continue to focus on the patient experience at that and other western Sydney hospitals as a result of that investment, with more to do and a lot more improvement to go. We have seen significant improvements in the performance at Blacktown hospital. But there is more work to do.
Natasha May
Claim patient ‘too scared’ to return to Blacktown hospital out of fear they would die there, NSW budget estimates hears
The NSW health minister, Ryan Park, is appearing before budget estimates this morning and questions kicked off around the state of Blacktown hospital.
Opposition MLC Susan Carter asked Park about what has been done since patients were photographed sleeping on the floor of the hospital in September last year.
Park said on-time treatment has gone up from one in six patients being treated on time back in March 2023, roughly about 16.5%, “under us, most recent data says one in two being treated on time, roughly around 44%”.
Carter asked about a resident called Patrick who she said emailed his office on Monday:
This week he was forced to wait for 38 hours and 17 minutes in Blacktown emergency department. He wasn’t fed. He saw patients sleeping on the floor of the emergency department. He’s now too scared to turn up at Blacktown hospital because he fears that he will die there.
Here’s a visual of the current state of flood advisories across NSW from the Bureau of Meteorology:
A major flood warning is in place for the Namoi River and a moderate flood warning for the Peel River, including at Tamworth, Manilla, Carroll Gap, Gunnedah and Goangra.
Netanyahu says Albanese’s reputation ‘forever tarnished’
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed Anthony Albanese in a new interview with Sky News. The Israeli leader expanded on his criticism of Australia’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state in quotes teased from the interview, set to air in full later today. Netanyahu said:
I’m sure he has a reputable record as a public servant, but I think his record is forever tarnished by the weakness that he showed in the face of these Hamas terrorist monsters.
When the worst terrorist organisation on Earth … when these people congratulate the prime minister of Australia, you know something is wrong.
The full interview airs at 8pm tonight.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
History will remember Albanese for what he is: A weak politician
who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews.— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) August 19, 2025
