Australia news live: Albanese to raise concerns over Chinese steel dumping; koala deaths in NSW conservation project ‘tragic and cruel', Greens say
Date: 2025-07-13T21:04:39.000Z
Title: Good morning
Content: and welcome to Monday's live news blog. I'm Nick Visser and I'll be taking you through the morning's news.
Anthony Albanese – who is now in China – will raise Australian concerns over Chinese steel dumping as he urges industry leaders from both nations to work together to develop low-carbon steel production methods. The PM has also launched a new tourism campaign to encourage more holidaymakers from China to visit Australia.
In response to an exclusive Guardian story, the New South Wales Greens MP Sue Higginson has described the deaths of seven out of 13 koalas in a conversation project as 'deeply disturbing, tragic and cruel'.
And Jannik Sinner has exorcised the wretched memory of his painful French Open title capitulation by defeating his great young rival Carlos Alcaraz.
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Reuters
24 minutes ago
- Reuters
Australian PM Albanese pledges to work with China on excess steel capacity
SHANGHAI, July 14 (Reuters) - Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday he was committed to working with China to address global excess steel capacity during a meeting of business leaders from the two countries in Shanghai. "As both countries cooperate to advance decarbonisation, we also need to work together to address global excess steel capacity," Albanese said in remarks at the beginning of the meeting. "It is in both countries' interest to ensure a sustainable and market-driven global steel sector." China's robust steel exports, which have partly offset faltering home demand, have triggered complaints from a growing list of countries, which say the flood of cheap Chinese steel has hurt local manufacturers. Albanese is currently on a three-city official visit to China, where regional security tensions and efforts to grow economic ties are likely to dominate talks. He will next travel to Beijing for an annual leaders' dialogue with Premier Li Qiang, and a company roundtable, and then head to the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu.
The Guardian
25 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Jim Chalmers insists Labor can meet target of 1.2m new homes despite department warning
Treasurer Jim Chalmers insists Labor is ambitious enough to meet its policy of building 1.2m new homes by 2030, despite his own department warning the federal government's goals will not be met. Calling housing shortages 'one of the defining challenges' facing the Australian economy, Chalmers downplayed advice from Treasury officials saying the current policy settings would not deliver the new homes and warning Labor would need to increase taxes to make the budget more sustainable. The comments were included in the incoming brief delivered to Chalmers after Labor's 3 May federal election victory, and accidentally made public in subheadings in a redacted version of the document released to the ABC under freedom of information rules. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email Treasury officials asked the public broadcaster to delete the version released without full redactions. A less revealing version has been posted by the department online. Chalmers said the advice reflected what he and the housing minister, Clare O'Neil, had been saying since before the election. 'We will need more effort to reach that substantial, ambitious housing target,' he said. 'We're investing tens of billions of dollars. We're working well with the states and territories and local governments. We're engaging with the industry. We're trying to get the capital flowing. I've changed the tax arrangements for build to rent. 'But we'll need to do better, and we'll need to do more, and the advice just reflects that.' Economists and industry players have warned Labor will miss its goals. Deloitte Access Economics research released in October forecast Labor would deliver fewer than a million new homes by 2029 – at least 200,000 below its promised target. Separate Housing Industry Association research has found the target for 1.2m new homes within five years would require a 50% increase on 2024 construction levels. To meet its promise, Labor needs an average of 240,000 new homes need to be built each year. But Australia has only ever come close to that level twice, in 2016 and in 2021. In 2023, only 173,000 homes were completed. Before the election, Labor pledged $10bn to build 100,000 homes over eight years, set to be offered for sale to first home buyers, as well as an expansion of a scheme allowing first home buyers to purchase a home with just a 5% deposit. The government has changed tax settings in the build to rent sector and banned foreign buyers from purchasing homes in Australia for two years. Chalmers said he was 'relaxed' about the error that saw extra information from the brief publicly shared, but said he would not make the full unredacted document public. Incoming government briefs from across government departments are routinely released to journalists, but with sensitive advice from senior public servants kept secret. On tax, Chalmers said addressing the federal budget's structural deficit was a key priority for Labor and would be achieved through less spending, more savings from income derived from commodity prices and some higher taxes. 'We've already made it really clear that we will do more to make our economy more productive and more resilient, we have made it clear that we need to build on the progress we've made in repairing the budget so that we can make the budget even more sustainable.' He confirmed next month's productivity roundtable would be structured around the themes of resilience, productivity and sustainability.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
PETER VAN ONSELEN: Albo is told to commit 'diplomatic suicide' and say the unthinkable moments after landing in China
Anthony Albanese 's six-day charm offensive in China is being hailed in some quarters as a diplomatic success: rekindling dialogue, calming trade tensions and getting panda hugs from Xi Jinping 's henchmen. It's certainly true that his government has presided over bringing an end to Chinese tariffs that have cost Australian exporters billions of dollars. But behind the photo ops and polite pressers lies a more uncomfortable truth: the Prime Minister is attempting a balancing act - but is at risk of stumbling. Certainly when it comes to Australia's relationship with the US now that Donald Trump is back in the White House. Albo is in China to shore up our trading relationship, a crucial mission after years of Chinese economic coercion that left barley, wine and beef producers bruised and battered. The optics of reconciliation matter as much as the dollars. But there's an elephant in the room no amount of stage-managed smiles can ignore: Taiwan. As Beijing ramps up military exercises near the island, President Xi and those around him have been doubling down on reunification rhetoric. Washington is watching closely and is now questioning Australia's role in any hypothetical future conflict. Which brings us to the trap Albanese now finds himself in. He's trying not to antagonise Beijing, especially not in the middle of a six-day Chinese visit. But the Americans are pressing for clarity when it comes to what Australia would do if the worst happens. The AUKUS pact, so proudly touted by both Australian major parties as a generational defence shift, is now part of that problem. Albanese is stuck in the middle, the ham in a strategic sandwich. Let's not kid ourselves: no Australian prime minister is going to land in China and publicly declare that we'll help America fight them over Taiwan. That would be diplomatic suicide. But equally, a foreign policy that looks too quiet, with too much hedging, invites criticism at home and concern abroad - namely within the Trump administration, and it's happening right in the midst of a formal US review of the AUKUS agreement. Albo risks looking weak to his critics, vague and untrustworthy to his allies, and he's being increasingly boxed in by choices he didn't confront early enough. More decisive rhetoric in support of the US alliance long before now might have avoided the uncomfortable questions now coming Albo's way. When AUKUS was announced, the Albanese government inherited a half-baked submarine plan from Scott Morrison, and it signed on without seriously levelling with the public about what it really meant: deeper strategic integration with the US and UK, especially vis-a-vis China. That was always going to raise questions about what Australia might do in the event of conflict over Taiwan. Rather than define our red lines early, Albanese did what he so often does and avoided the hard sell. He played things quietly, hoping to manage the politics later. Trump-aligned Republicans are reviewing AUKUS with growing scepticism, concerned that the US is promising its prized Virginia-class subs to help build up Australia's fleet, only to get mealy-mouthed ambiguity in return. If we want the Americans to weaken their own short-term fleet capacity for our long-term security, they understandably want cast-iron guarantees that we'll be there in any Pacific showdown. That's the geopolitical trade-off AUKUS was always built on, even if Labor didn't realise it when signing on in opposition to avoid a defence policy showdown ahead of the 2022 election. To be clear, under ANZUS we're already committed to 'act to meet the common danger' in the event of an attack. US bases on Australian soil (think Pine Gap and Darwin) make our strategic role inevitable, notwithstanding Albo's tiptoeing around the issue while on Chinese soil. The ambiguity is therefore political, not legal. It's also hypothetical, which is why it's cheap politics from the Coalition to try and ramp up its attacks at this moment in time. Nonetheless, the PM's refusal to clearly address the Taiwan scenario directly, even hypothetically, has left him open to the charge of weakness. Not a tag he wants to stick. The opposition knows full well the PM can't say the quiet part out loud while he's meeting and greeting Chinese officials. But that's not the point. They hope that by framing him as hesitant, and even untrustworthy on matters of national security, the longer our PM stays silent the more such framing might harden. Albo still hasn't met with Donald Trump since both their election wins. The US-Australia alliance has outlasted countless leaders on both sides, and it will do so again this time around. But that's no excuse for complacency, especially with someone like Trump who never forgets a slight, and never misses an opportunity to exploit perceived weaknesses. This whole episode puts the real cost of AUKUS into sharp focus. Not just the eye-watering tens of billions of dollars and the two decade delivery schedule, but the political price of being an American ally in an increasingly bipolar world. The subs are only half the story. The strategic expectations that come with them - help the Americans defend Taiwan, for one - are coming into sharper focus courtesy of the rhetoric coming out of team Trump. Albo wants to be the grown-up in the room, restoring civility to foreign affairs after the tumult of the Morrison years, certainly with respect to China. That's commendable. It's also been an important feature of Labor's electoral success in Western Australia, where Chinese dependence is greatest. None of this is to suggest war over Taiwan is imminent. It's not. But the wedge is real and Albanese's inability to neutralise it has left him somewhat exposed. If he can't find a way to communicate Australia's strategic position in a way that reassures Washington without enraging Beijing, he risks turning a hypothetical future crisis into a present-day credibility problem. Right now the PM looks like a leader trying to ride two horses at once: smiling for the cameras during his visit to China while quietly dodging questions coming from the United States.
