Latest news with #Ley
The Australian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Australian
Core support for the Coalition collapses to 40-year low: Newspoll
Core support for the Coalition has fallen to the lowest point in 40 years following Labor's blistering victory at the 2025 federal election. In the first Newspoll by The Australian since May's ballot, primary vote for the Coalition fell from 31.8 per cent at the election to just 29 per cent. Labor had meanwhile extended its two-party preferred lead, from 55.2 per cent at the election to 57 per cent, while the primary vote sat at 37 per cent. The result for the Liberal/Nationals coalition is worst primary vote since Newspoll first compared primary vote levels across the federal parties in November 1985. It also marks an 11-point decrease for the Coalition since its most recent peak of 40 per cent just eight months earlier. As for the Prime Minister, some 47 per cent of respondents said they were satisfied with his performance – an equal number, 47 per cent, said they were not. For the new Opposition leader, Sussan Ley received approval ratings consistent with newly-elected opposition leaders, with 35 per cent. Ms Ley trailed behind Mr Albanese on preferred prime minister, with the Labor leader sitting at 52 per cent and Ms Ley at 32 per cent. She did, though, outpace her predecessor, Peter Dutton, who returned just 25 per cent of the preferred prime minister vote after his first outing as Liberal leader. Read related topics: Newspoll Breaking News New York mass shooter blamed NFL for his brain injuries Breaking News Gaza famine warning as Israel resists ceasefire calls
The Australian
2 days ago
- Business
- The Australian
Opposition to back Labor's student debt bill
The Albanese government's signature student debt-slashing Bill has passed through the House of Representatives, bringing touted relief for millions of graduates one step closer. While Labor could have passed the Bill with its massive 94-seat majority, the Coalition also backed it after Sussan Ley confirmed the opposition would not stand in the way. But the Coalition's guarantee is crucial to getting it through the Senate, where Labor does not hold a majority and the Greens have threatened to stall it in a bid to attach amendments. Fronting media before the vote, the Opposition Leader said she still had concerns over the Albanese government's broader response to the cost-of-living crisis, but that 'we will not oppose the government's proposal'. 'And I want to say this to students today – remember this moment,' Ms Ley told reporters. 'Because Anthony Albanese says life will be easier under him, costs will come down, everything will get cheaper. 'Remember this moment because, when I have spoken to young people across the country, they have talked about escalating costs, in rent, electricity, any groceries, in everything a student needs to spend money on. 'It has been really tough.' Opposition Leader Sussan Ley says the Coalition will back Labor's signature student debt-slashing Bill. Picture: Martin Ollman / NewsWire She said added that 'underpinning this student debt relief Bill has been a massive cost-of-living crisis for Australia's students' and vowed to hold the government to account. 'But today, we agreed to not oppose the Bill as it makes its way through the parliament,' Ms Ley said. 'We do care about students who are struggling with the cost of living and said we would be positive where we can be and critical where we need to be.' Labor's Bill was central to its youth-focused re-election pitch. It would cut student debts by 20 per cent for some three million graduates or wipe off about $5500 from the average debt. The changes would also raise the repayment threshold for student loans from $54,000 to $67,000. Earlier, Education Minister Jason Clare told his Labor colleagues that he hoped the Bill would pass before question time.
ABC News
2 days ago
- Politics
- ABC News
Anthony Albanese and Sussan Ley were once on a Palestine unity ticket
Here's a weird state of affairs. On an issue that is swinging a wrecking ball through institutions and communities across this country and indeed the democratic world, the leaders of Australia's two major parties are quiet co-occupants of a historic unity ticket. Both Anthony Albanese and Sussan Ley are past convenors of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine group, having joined it — or in Albanese's case, actively co-founded it — when they were backbenchers, more than two decades ago. Both have expressly supported the recognition of Palestinian statehood. Albanese created the group in 1999 with Joe Hockey, who was at the time a new Liberal MP and a junior minister in John Howard's Coalition government. Ley joined the Parliamentary Friends Of Palestine shortly after her election to the House of Representatives in 2001, having wrested the vast regional seat of Farrer from the National Party. In 2003, she took on a leadership role, telling the Australian Jewish News: "For those of us who look forward to an independent Palestinian state and wish to advance the cause of viable sovereign statehood, this group gives us an opportunity to hold out the hand of friendship, understanding and trust." In 2011, by which time she was a shadow minister in Tony Abbott's opposition, Ley told the Parliament that she supported the Palestinian people's bid for recognition and membership of the United Nations. On the question of Palestine, the position of the federal Labor Party is clear. In 2021, for the first time, the party's national conference voted not only to confirm its support for a two-state solution, but to "call on the next Labor government to recognise Palestine as a state", in a motion authored by then shadow foreign minister Penny Wong. That next Labor government arrived at the 2022 election. Wong is now foreign minister. And now the opposition is led by someone who also is on parliamentary record as supporting Palestinian statehood. If you were an intelligent alien freshly landed from the Planet Zorb, you could be forgiven for thinking matters should be pretty straightforward from here, yes? No. The rules of Australian political debate about Palestine — more than 12,000km away from Canberra and approximately seven ten-thousandths of our land mass — are much, much more complicated than that. Labor Senator Fatima Payman last year found this out the hard way, when she announced her intention to vote for a Greens Senate motion to recognise Palestine, citing the Labor platform's explicit position. Payman is no longer a Labor senator. She is permanently estranged from her old party, an outcome that would cause our alien visitor to scratch its head, if that's indeed how intelligent life-forms from Zorb express puzzlement. The best demonstration of how tangled and Byzantine this matter can become is obtained by zooming back in time to the minority government of Julia Gillard, the time-frame in which Ley devoted a parliamentary speech to her support for Palestinian statehood. Albanese, by this time the Leader of the House, wrangling legislation day by day for a prime minister holding power by one vote, was publicly more circumspect, for good reason. The status of a Palestinian state was by this time the nexus of a significant proxy war within Labor. And a complex, multi-layered war it was, fought mostly below the public water line, but much muddied by related disputes, some of them ancient: factional divides between Left and Right, or within the Right between NSW and Victoria. The ongoing bad blood between Gillard and the leader she deposed, Kevin Rudd, was an additional underwater hazard. By that time, Rudd was foreign minister, running a campaign for Australia to win a seat on the UN Security Council, and pressing Gillard to distance the government from Israel. Gillard was a supporter of Australia's alliance with Israel, who despite nominally belonging to Labor's Left faction, was much more closely associated with elements of the Right (Keep up, little alien. Don't lose focus!) As Australian Union of Students leader in the early 1980s, Gillard was instrumental in quashing that organisation's activism for Palestine in the early 1980s, arguing that it "alienated the vast mass of students". Australia won its bid for a seat at the Security Council in late 2012, by which time Kevin Rudd had quit as foreign minister and his replacement, former NSW premier Bob Carr, had taken over trying to talk Gillard out of voting against Palestine being given observer status at the UN. "To feed my gloomy irritation I sustain another defeat at the hands of the Likudniks," reports Carr in a diary entry on November 12, 2012, using one of his terms for pro-Israel Labor colleagues (another is "felafel faction"). In the same entry, Carr moodily records that an attempt to "escape episodes of atrial fibrillation" by eliminating coffee from his diet had also failed, producing only lethargy and headaches. "To live is to lose ground." But in a cabinet meeting on November 27 of that year, Carr and the majority of his cabinet colleagues erupted in rebellion against their prime minister. Some were motivated by principle. Some by factional allegiance. Some by the demographics of their electorates. Some by their loyalty to Rudd. Either way, Gillard had only two cabinet voices defending her that day: Victorian right-wingers Stephen Conroy and Bill Shorten. The upshot was that Gillard was forced to retreat from her position. Australia did not — as she'd earlier directed — vote against the motion affording Palestine observer status at the UN. Instead, we abstained. The motion passed easily, with only a handful of nations opposed. Australia's stance made no difference to the final result, but it nearly tipped Gillard out of the leadership. As it was, she lasted just another six months. Incidentally, Carr — who remains Labor's most trenchant critic of Israel, and on Monday called upon the government to recognise Palestinian statehood as soon as possible — way back in 1977 co-founded, along with Bob Hawke, the group Labor Friends of Israel. Ley, meanwhile, has had her past statements on Palestine used against her in internal backgrounding campaigns twice this year. First in January to frustrate her request for the foreign affairs portfolio, which as deputy Liberal leader she was well within her rights to demand in accordance with the tradition. And again, less successfully, when she sought the leadership. On Monday, Ley declared that she remained "a friend of the Palestinian people", but joined her colleagues in blaming Hamas for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the horror of which continues to deepen. The prime minister, meanwhile, strengthened his criticism of Israel in a further incremental step towards adopting a position to which he has been bound in the simplest of terms since 2021. Our visiting alien might well ask: "Okay, so if binding policy positions and statements of principle aren't a reliable guide to outcomes, then what is it that shifts the needle?" And the answer is: Usually, what shifts the needle is the degree of unspeakable suffering sustained by the innocent. Especially when they are children. The dreadful images of October 7, terrified young people and children murdered and abducted. And then, the sickening images of starving children in Gaza. It's the most depressing answer imaginable.
Sky News AU
2 days ago
- Business
- Sky News AU
Opposition to back Labor's student debt bill
Millions of Australians are closer to getting thousands wiped off their student debt after MPs passed a major Labor Bill. The Albanese government's signature student debt-slashing Bill has passed through the House of Representatives, bringing touted relief for millions of graduates one step closer. While Labor could have passed the Bill with its massive 94-seat majority, the Coalition also backed it after Sussan Ley confirmed the opposition would not stand in the way. But the Coalition's guarantee is crucial to getting it through the Senate, where Labor does not hold a majority and the Greens have threatened to stall it in a bid to attach amendments. — Australian House of Representatives (@AboutTheHouse) July 29, 2025 Fronting media before the vote, the Opposition Leader said she still had concerns over the Albanese government's broader response to the cost-of-living crisis, but that 'we will not oppose the government's proposal'. 'And I want to say this to students today – remember this moment,' Ms Ley told reporters. 'Because Anthony Albanese says life will be easier under him, costs will come down, everything will get cheaper. 'Remember this moment because, when I have spoken to young people across the country, they have talked about escalating costs, in rent, electricity, any groceries, in everything a student needs to spend money on. 'It has been really tough.' She said added that 'underpinning this student debt relief Bill has been a massive cost-of-living crisis for Australia's students' and vowed to hold the government to account. 'But today, we agreed to not oppose the Bill as it makes its way through the parliament,' Ms Ley said. 'We do care about students who are struggling with the cost of living and said we would be positive where we can be and critical where we need to be.' Labor's Bill was central to its youth-focused re-election pitch. It would cut student debts by 20 per cent for some three million graduates or wipe off about $5500 from the average debt. The changes would also raise the repayment threshold for student loans from $54,000 to $67,000. Earlier, Education Minister Jason Clare told his Labor colleagues that he hoped the Bill would pass before question time. Originally published as MPs pass Labor's student debt relief
West Australian
3 days ago
- Politics
- West Australian
Katina Curtis: Ley shifts away from culture wars but WA Liberals drag them back
The WA Liberals delivered a great big up yours to Sussan Ley at the weekend. The 70-odd members of the party's State council voted for motions — backed by Michaelia Cash and Andrew Hastie — calling to abandon the net zero emissions target, ditch Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags at official proceedings and cut back on welcomes to country. Since taking on the leadership, Ley has in word and deed sought to shift her party away from culture wars and onto turf that could be better labelled constructive disagreement. But she hasn't been helped by the Nationals, and she isn't being helped by party branches like those in WA, South Australia and Queensland. The country was last week treated to the unedifying spectacle of two grown men, each of them once upon a time deputy prime minister, publicly declaring they were 'virile' and play-acting as bulls as they sought to shred the Coalition's position on climate action. Again. After the election that delivered a majority vote to progressives — Labor, Greens and teal independents — the Liberal Party membership and their Nationals cousins aren't just sticking the finger up at the leader, they're also telling the electorate where it should go. Yes, the WA branch of the party is traditionally conservative and yes, the motions aren't binding on any elected representatives, although they do point out how the people who preselect them feel on such issues. But it does show the party base is out of step with ordinary voters. That should be a concern to Liberals who want to win seats back. The Liberals haven't picked up a new WA Federal seat since 2013. Over the past two elections, they've gone from six senators to four. Basil Zempilas, who didn't vote on the motions on Saturday due to a pressing other engagement, is alive to this, saying on Monday that flags, welcomes and net zero aren't top of mind for voters. 'The WA parliamentary Liberal Party … are very comfortable with standing in front of the Aboriginal flag. We are very comfortable with the welcome to country, and we support the status quo on the net zero targets,' he said. 'I'll just note that the former leader of the Federal Liberal Party put some of these issues on the agenda pre the federal election, and we know the results of that Federal election.' Ley isn't overly concerned, saying she knows individuals in her party room have passionate views on these things. She also will be acutely aware there's no love lost between her and WA's Federal Liberals, only two of whom backed her in the leadership ballot and some of whom are quietly questioning her tactical nous. These are the fights for the soul of the party the Liberals should have had three years ago, but didn't under Peter Dutton's steely 'unity.' Airing such divisions now gives them time to focus on how to win seats closer to an election — as long as they haven't hurt their leader too much along the way.
