Anthony Albanese to negotiate on security and defence pact with the European Union
Anthony Albanese has officially confirmed that Australia will commence negotiations on a Security and Defence Partnership with the European Union, as Australia firms up strategic support with allied countries in a precarious global environment.
Mirroring similar partnerships the EU has with Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom, the agreement moves to boost defence co-operation between the two countries in areas such as defence industry, counter terrorism, and critical technologies.
It would not be legally binding or considered a treaty, and Australia would not be required to send troops should an EU member be attacked.
The Prime Minister confirmed he had accepted the invite following a trilateral meeting with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa on Wednesday, with Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles set to lead negotiations.
The agreement will create a framework for how the two countries will work together on issues like cyber security, and counter-terrorism.
Mr Albanese said the partnership was a 'key takeout' of his meetings at the G7.
'I very much welcome the EU's offer for a Security and Defence Partnership and Australia will warmly take it upand commence work immediately,' he said.
'This will open the door to joint defence procurement opportunities and will benefit both our industries and our security.
'At a time of global uncertainty, it is our collective responsibility to work together to uphold peace, security and economic prosperity.
The need for greater allied collaboration also featured heavily in Mr Albanese's bilateral meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Wednesday (AEST).
Both men spoke about growing collaboration between Australia and Japan to maintain a 'free and open Pacific' amid increasing aggression from China.
Mr Ishiba said the state of international affairs was 'becoming more complex,' naming conflicts in Ukraine, Middle East and China's military presence in the Indo-Pacific.
'Under such circumstances, I think Japan (and) Australia co-ordination really continues to set an example of what a like-minded country's co-operation is, and going to going forward together, I would like to make sure that free and open in the Pacific will be realised,' he said.
Mr Albanese said Japan and Australia shared 'a very special partnership and a strategic relationship'.
'Increasingly in recent years, our defence ties have become more important,' he added.
'Both countries are strong supporters of free and fair trade, and that is something that has brought prosperity to not just our nations, but to our region.'
Mr Albanese's appearance at the G7 also coincides with a sudden 30-day Pentagon review of the AUKUS security pact by the Trump administration, which prompted fears the 2018 agreement could be scrapped.
While it was expected to be a prominent topic of conversation during a 20-minute conversation between Mr Albanese and Donald Trump, the talks were put on ice after the US President departed the summit early due to the escalating violence between Israel and Iran.
Fears for AUKUS were still somewhat allayed after UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer backed in the deal during a press conference with Mr Trump.
'Yep, we're proceeding with that,' Sir Keir said following his bilateral meeting with Mr Trump.
'I think the person that is doing a review – we did a review when we came into government, so that makes good sense to me. But it's a really important deal.'
Although Mr Trump didn't go as far to back in AUKUS, he said of the UK and the US: 'We're very long-time partners and allies and friends, and we've become friends in a short period of time.'
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ABC News
21 minutes ago
- ABC News
Why your AI questions are a power and water drain
Sam Hawley: How often do you use AI? It's becoming part of our everyday lives. But when you pump in a question into something like ChatGPT, do you ever think about the energy it uses? Today, Gordon Noble from the Institute of Sustainable Futures at UTS on the data centres driving AI and what they're doing to the climate. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. So Gordon, Googling something or typing a question into ChatGPT, it is so easy and simple for us and very, very useful, of course. But we don't really stop to think about where all that information is coming from, do we? Gordon Noble: Yeah, that's right. And I think this is crept up on us. When you do a search now with all these AI tools, ChatGPT being one of them, they can be 10 times more energy consuming than, for instance, doing a Google search. And what sits behind that is this massive investment that we've seen in data centres globally. So it's absolutely exploded. Sam Hawley: Yeah, okay. So we're not thinking about these data centres when we're typing in what we want to know from ChatGPT. And most of us would never have seen one or been in one. What do they look like? Where are they? Gordon Noble: Yeah, it's a really good question. So data centres, just to put it in visual terms, so the average size of what they call these hyperscale data centres, so they're around about 10,000 square feet. To give you an indication, a Bunnings store is about 8,000 square feet. So they're kind of just big sheds, right? Huge. But what we're seeing now is that we're moving to not just these Bunnings-like sheds, if you like, but we're moving to these massive million square data centres, almost campuses of data centres. Around the world, there are around about 1,100 of these hyperscale data centres. In Sydney, for instance, Sydney is a big centre for data centres here in Australia. We have over 85 data centres. One of the reasons Sydney is such an attractive place for data centres is we have 12 submarine cables that come out of Sydney and basically connect us to the rest of the world. So data centres globally are now around about 1.5% of global energy consumption. The question is what's going to happen in the future? Sam Hawley: Okay, so Gordon, let's delve a bit further into how these data centres actually work, because while they're enabling us to inform ourselves at lightning speed, they're also using a huge amount of power, massive amount. Gordon Noble: So roughly at the moment, global energy consumption coming out of data centres is around 1.5% of all the global electricity. The issue is that data centres are highly concentrated. So it's in places in the world, the US, parts of Europe, Ireland is a massive data centre hub, where they're actually causing strain on the energy grid because of how much the energy growth has been. So to give you an idea in Australia, so a research report from Morgan and Stanley, they were projecting that roughly at the moment, data centre energy consumption from the grid is around about 5% of all of our energy consumption. But what they're projecting is that this could grow to between 8% and 15% of all of our electricity consumption here in Australia, depending on some of the decisions that are made as in how much we use AI tools. So what the International Energy Agency is now saying is that by 2030, the energy consumption from data centres will be the size of Japan. So we're talking massive amounts of increase in energy consumption. That's placing strains on the grid, but it's also placing a shift in terms of how the energies come from. So for instance, in the US, we're seeing providers like Microsoft, who are big data centre operators because of the tools that they've got. They're looking to shift to nuclear. And one of the things they're looking to do is to reopen Three Mile Island, which is the nuclear plant that had been mothballed to basically take all that energy from a reopened Three Mile Island. So lots and lots of decisions as a result of this. Sam Hawley: Why is it, Gordon, that AI takes so much more energy than just Googling? Gordon Noble: These large language models are effectively trained to look at the whole of the internet, right? So when they're developing these models, they're actually looking at everything in the internet. And then when we ask it to do something, it's churning away from all that work that it's done. Lots and lots of different applications, but I think that common common thread is that it's aggregating across a lot of data rather than just that single data search where it goes to a single source. Sam Hawley: Do we have a sense already about the sort of strain that it's putting on electricity grids in Australia? Gordon Noble: Yeah, so at the moment, that's one of the questions. And we don't really have, I think, a good picture of the national demand, right? So the issue at the moment is a lot of the training of these AI tools, they've taken place in the US principally. So they haven't yet really been here in Australia. So that's going to be one of the questions as we increase the size of our data centre industry. Where is it going to start to have implications in terms of energy demand? Will it be, for instance, in Sydney, which is really our data centre capital? What would the impact, if you like, in terms of energy consumption in New South Wales in particular? Other states have the same issue, but because Sydney really is that capital of data centres in Australia, that's where some of the key issues will emerge. Sam Hawley: And Gordon, every time we use an AI site like ChatGPT, it uses a lot of water, doesn't it? Gordon Noble: Yeah, look, this is a real sleeper issue, and it's one that we're very concerned with. There's recent research, for instance, that since 2022, all the new data centres that have been developed, you know, two thirds of them are in areas where there's water stress. So it's becoming a big issue. But the way to think about data centres is that they're like the human body, they like to be kept cool, operate efficiently. And one of the ways that that happens is using water. So they consume literally billions of litres of water. The issue as we go forward is how do we actually, in Australia, build a data centre industry that is sustainable, given that we're an arid continent, given that we're going to have challenges from our climate in terms of water. At the moment, one of the opportunities is that both in Sydney and Melbourne, where data centres are going to likely be established, is we actually have surplus water in the form of recycled water. We tip 97% of our recycled water out in Sydney and Melbourne, we actually tip it out into our oceans and bays. So this is an asset, for instance, that could be used if we're smart enough to say, well, how can we actually build, say pipelines of recycled water to use this water, so we're not actually putting stress, environmental stress, on our rivers and creeks and streams, etc. So there's opportunities around this that we could solve. Sam Hawley: This is all making me start to feel rather bad for using ChatGPT for that recipe last night. I must go back to the old book, the cookbook lives on. Anyway, just tell me about emissions then, because we're meant to be bringing them down and I'm gathering this is not helping. Even the tech companies admit that, don't they? Gordon Noble: Yeah, this is what happened last year. So I think the surprise to the market is we started having the sustainability reports of the big tech companies and they all started to actually reveal how much their emissions had started to increase over the last four or five years. Each one of them, there are different increases in emissions depending on the way they've structured their operations, whether they build data centres, whether they outsource them, etc. But the picture that was emerging was a very consistent increase in their energy consumption. I think that really woke up a lot of the market in terms of, yeah, this is actually an energy intensive industry. Up until at that time, I think there was a little bit of a lack of understanding of how much energy data centres were creating because it wasn't really being aggregated in a single spot. So as we've been getting what we call these climate related financial disclosures and companies are starting to report on what we call the scope one, two and three emissions, we're starting to get a bigger picture. We're expecting to get more reporting in the next month or so. So what we'll start to see is what's happened since 2024 and 2025 and then we'll start to really have a good understanding of where things go forward. But what the clear picture at the moment is emissions arising in the big tech companies driven by their investments in AI. Sam Hawley: Gosh, all right. So Gordon, how worried do you think we should be then about this massive energy use and who should actually be taking responsibility for this? Gordon Noble: You know, I think it's as you mentioned, there's a lot of potential benefits around AI tools. You know, we can use these, for instance, for whether it's the recipe, a lot of environmental applications, a lot of benefits here if we get this right. At the moment from an Australian perspective, what really we haven't seen is a national approach being taken on this. We have, I think, in the Australian government an approach to communications that goes back to the, you know, the days in the early Federation we had a postmaster general. At the moment we need to start to think of, you know, the digital economy as actually moving across a range of different portfolios in the federal government, for instance. So we need a strategy around this to recognise that this has potentially got massive benefits, but also we really need to manage that. What we're seeing in other jurisdictions, for instance, Singapore, have gone down the pathway of establishing a green data centre roadmap. We need something like that in Australia. Sam Hawley: But what do you think without a new approach, can we keep pumping these questions into ChatGPT and still reach our environmental goals? And can our energy system actually cope with demand that is just going to keep growing? Gordon Noble: This is the big question. So the reality is if we do have at the higher end of expectations of the growth of AI, the energy that's demanded here just in Australia will actually crowd out other investments that we're making in renewable energy. So whilst we're making progress in decarbonising our grid, you know, there's an assumption that's based on, you know, a certain level of growth of energy demand. If that increases significantly, you start to put pressure on how much we can actually invest in more renewables, in more solar, for instance, more battery technology. It starts to then have that question, do we keep coal-fired power stations longer than we need? So I think there's a broader set of issues that we really need to get our heads around. Sam Hawley: Gordon Noble is a Research Director with the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney. This episode was produced by Sydney Pead and Adair Sheppard. Audio production by Cinnamon Nippard. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. I'm going to take some leave from now for a couple of weeks. Sydney Pead will be with you from tomorrow. Thanks for listening.
ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
Australian workers lose more than $4.7 billion a year in unpaid super — and the ATO rarely penalises employers
More than 80 per cent — several billion dollars annually — of unpaid superannuation goes unrecovered, and the authority in charge rarely penalises employers who do not pay it. Richard Aichinger says his son hasn't been paid superannuation for more than 12 months — and, despite reporting it to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) at the start of the year, it is still continuing. The 19-year-old, who is a second-year electrical apprentice, has approached his boss on numerous occasions, but hasn't received any clarity. "They just keep getting the answer that, 'Yeah, they'll be paying it soon'," his father says. Mr Aichinger, from New South Wales, says his son hasn't heard anything since he reported the issue to the ATO back in February. "He's very annoyed about it," he says. From July 1, the "superannuation guarantee" rate will increase from 11.5 per cent to 12 per cent. That means an amount equivalent to 12 per cent of your ordinary earnings should be paid into your super fund by your employer. You can check if that's happening through the government's myGov service or directly through your super fund. Australia's retirement saving system is mandatory, and the funds controlled by the sector are set to surpass the UK and Canada within the next five to seven years to become the second-largest pool of retirement savings in the world, despite our small population. But that's only if the money gets there. Misha Schubert, from the super funds' peak body the Super Members Council, says the ATO hasn't been tough enough on dodgy employers. "The ATO needs to be a strong cop on the beat and really lift the bar on its compliance and recovery efforts, to ensure that Australian workers are getting paid the super they are legally owed," she says. The ATO recovered just 17 per cent of the $4.7 billion in unpaid super for 2020-21, the most recent available figures. "Every week in Australia, $100 million that is owed to workers in super does not make it into their super accounts," Ms Schubert adds. A 2024 report by the council calculates that 2.8 million people are failing to receive their full super entitlements each financial year, with the average underpayment per affected worker being $1,810. "The size and scale of that challenge is shocking, and there needs to be further uplift in the proactive efforts to recover that money for workers," Ms Schubert says. In 2020-21, the ATO issued 9,594 penalties for unpaid super. But only 4,124 (43 per cent) of them required the business to pay a penalty above remediation of the unpaid amount. That means for most businesses caught doing the wrong thing, the amount they paid was simply the money they should have paid workers before they got caught. A question at Senate Estimates revealed fewer than 1 per cent of those businesses copped the maximum 200 per cent penalty. In a statement, an ATO spokesperson said the issue is important. In its most recent data, the ATO says it received around 28,100 referrals about unpaid super from employees, and that 23,600 of those were finalised. This resulted in $659 million in super being paid, and $300 million in penalties. The figures don't say how much most employees got back, or what percentage of employers paid a penalty for their failings. The statement adds that 167,000 employers received reminders or "prompts" to pay unpaid super, and that raised $240 million. On June 6, Mr Aichinger sent an email to his local federal MP, Emma McBride, and also to Amanda Rishworth, the minister for employment and workplace relations, outlining the issues with his son's superannuation. Within a week he got a call from the ATO. "She acknowledged my son had done the complaint online, she said several other employees from the same business had also, and then I quizzed her about, 'Well, why isn't there any feedback or anyone responding back to my son?' Mr Aichinger said. "She said that they're not allowed to do that … because they haven't got the manpower to do it. Mr Aichinger says he was told the only time the ATO does respond is if it intends to negotiate a payment plan with the employer. "I said, 'Well when will you be doing something about my son's situation?' And she said it had been given a case number, but it hadn't been allocated yet." Mr Aichinger said the ATO representative wouldn't give "any sort of a timeline" on when the issue would be followed up or if there would be an investigation. The ATO says it cannot comment on the tax affairs of any individual due to its statutory confidentiality obligations. Mr Aichinger worries his son won't see the thousands of dollars he is owed in super. "I'm just really disappointed by that. If the ATO is the body who's given the job of policing that, then why are they seemingly under-resourced? "What happens if the company goes into administration or liquidation? That's $5,000 outstanding in my son's case. "I think it might be a problem that is quite widespread with some employers in the construction industry." The Australian National Audit Office looked at the issue of superannuation under-payment in 2022 and found the ATO had identified three "high-risk" industries: construction, accommodation and food services (often called hospitality), and retail. It called the ATO's activity in dealing with unpaid super "partly effective". In 2021 there were 220 ATO staff involved in "compliance activity" around super, most of them responding to complaints made by underpaid workers. "More specifically, 90 per cent were responding to employee notifications," it read. Currently, it's compulsory for employers to pay their staff superannuation at least every three months. But, if "payday super" kicks in from July next year, employers will have to deposit super every payday — that's if legislation is passed making it a legal requirement on employers. Payday super is as it sounds — your super being paid on the same day as your wages. Some employers already do this, but it's not a requirement. If the law changes, everyone will get their superannuation payments at the same time as their wages. The chief executive of superannuation clearing house Wrkr, Trent Lund, has just completed a pilot program with superannuation fund Rest in preparation for payday super. "It was important to test both the experiences and improvement, and actually [test if] it can really deal with the requirements," he says. Mr Lund says that under current regulations, some businesses are using money that would otherwise be set aside for staff super to smooth over cash flow problems. "It's gambling, because you're actually using working capital which is not yours — it's actually an employee's future super," he says. "But it's a pattern that builds over time. "The more you do it, and [the more] that becomes part of your cash flow workings, in your mind as a leader in a business, it starts to become normalised — and I think that's what we are really trying to change," he says. He believes payday super is designed to protect workers. "The frequency of pay is much faster, which means the errors will be detected earlier … so the risk to that employee is much, much less under payday super." JobWatch principal lawyer Gabrielle Marchetti would welcome payday super. She's been representing workers for decades, and has seen many miss out on superannuation. "We know that our callers and our clients are finding it very difficult to chase up super," she says. "They're very frustrated. They've lodged a notification with the ATO about unpaid super, and months have gone by without them receiving any kind of update. "People are very frustrated about not knowing where the investigation is at … if in fact the ATO is even investigating their matter." Those most affected are those most likely to be in vulnerable situations already, she says. "In JobWatch's experience, the industries typically that people are calling us about unpaid super would be hospitality, construction, retail and cleaning," she says. "They're often also being underpaid their wages and other entitlements — often very vulnerable clients, often from migrant backgrounds and employed by small businesses." Technology could play a part in reducing unpaid super. Single Touch Payroll, or STP, , sends employers' reporting information directly to government agencies. It was made mandatory in 2019 Before then, employees would get a "group certificate" from their employer at the end of the financial year which would list how much they had been paid, how much tax was withheld, and their superannuation payments. All of that information is now sent directly to the ATO, and is available year-round through services like myGov. That's helpful for employees (and accountants), but also to the entity in charge of making sure superannuation is paid correctly: the ATO. "It gives the ATO the real-time capability to make sure that workers are being paid their super on time and in full with every pay cycle," says Misha Schubert from the Super Members Council. "So those tools are there — they should be being used by the ATO. "And, if they're not, then the ATO needs to look at what uplift it can drive instantly to make that happen." The ATO says it is working with the technology. "We have invested in comprehensive data matching from employers and super funds to ensure employee entitlements are being paid, and use data matching and risk models to identify where employers may not be paying the correct amount of superannuation for their employees," the agency said in a statement. This isn't the first time Mr Aichinger has had to advocate for one of his kids. His eldest son is a fourth-year carpentry apprentice who also struggled with super payments when he started out in the industry. "His first employer didn't pay any superannuation in the first six months of his apprenticeship … and he left because of it, and reported it to the ATO." He says the ATO did nothing, and so he called the employer himself. For workers missing out on around $5 billion each year, advocates are hoping for a better way to get money back — particularly for people without persistent and convincing dads like Richard Aichinger.
News.com.au
5 hours ago
- News.com.au
Penny Wong to meet Quad counterparts in Washington
Australia's chief diplomat will meet her Quad counterparts in Washington this week as the Trump administration looks to ramp up pressure on China. The Quad, made up of Australia, India, Japan and the US, is a partnership broadly seen as a check on China's economic and military might. Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the upcoming dialogue reflected the challenges facing the Indo Pacific. 'This will be the second Quad Foreign Ministers' Meeting within six months, reflecting the importance of our partnership and the strategic circumstances confronting our region and the world,' she said in a statement. 'I look forward to engaging with my Quad counterparts as we strengthen cooperation to ensure a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific.' Senator Wong also said she would 'meet separately with each of my counterparts … to progress bilateral cooperation'. The meeting comes as pressure mounts on the Albanese government to bolster Australia's alliance with the US. Nearly six months have passed since Donald Trump's inauguration and Anthony Albanese is yet to secure an in-person meeting with the US President. Australian producers have been slugged with tariffs on most exports to the US, including duties of up to 50 per cent on steel and aluminium, and doubts loom large about the Trump administration's commitment to AUKUS after it launched a snap review of the defence pact. The Albanese government has also refused to budge after Washington's call to hike defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP amid alarm over China's military build-up. In her statement, Senator Wong stressed the US 'is our closest ally and principal strategic partner'. 'Our alliance contributes to the peace, prosperity and stability of our countries and the region we share,' she said. 'We will continue to work together to further our important economic and security partnership and advance our mutual interests.' Former US president Joe Biden was last year caught on a hot mic telling his fellow Quad leaders that China was 'testing' them, giving a rare glimpse into the candid nature of talks between some of the region's key players. 'We believe (Chinese President) Xi Jinping is looking to focus on domestic economic challenges and minimise the turbulence in China's diplomatic relationships, and he's also looking to buy himself some diplomatic space, in my view, to aggressively pursue China's interest,' Mr Biden said. 'China continues to behave aggressively, testing us all across the region, and it's true in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, South China, South Asia and the Taiwan Straits. 'It's true across the scope of our relationship, including on economic and technology issues.' Mr Biden's bluntness was a stark contrast of how leaders of all Quad countries have tried to frame the strategic four-way dialogue, often deflecting suggestions that it exists to counter China. The hawkish approach to Beijing has been adopted by the Trump administration, with US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier this month warning of an 'imminent' threat to the Indo Pacific. Mr Hegseth said China could invade Taiwan as early as 2027. Such a move would deal a major blow to global supply of semiconductors – crucial components in modern tech – and massively disrupt vital trade routes. 'Let me be clear, any attempt by Communist China to conquer Taiwan by force would result in devastating consequences for the Indo-Pacific and the world,' Mr Hegseth said. 'There's no reason to sugarcoat it. The threat China poses is real and it could be imminent. 'We hope not but certainly could be.' Meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles on the sidelines of the conference, he directly asked Australia to boost the defence budget to 3.5 per cent of GDP.
