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Australia must avoid ‘foreign policy autopilot’, thinktank report says
Daniel Hurst
The climate crisis and the rise of China should spur Australia to get smarter with its statecraft, according to a report to be published today.
The paper, produced by the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue (AP4D) thinktank, will be launched by Labor’s Penny Wong and the Coalition’s Simon Birmingham in Canberra this morning.
It suggests Australia’s engagement with the world cannot be left solely to the departments of foreign affairs and defence, and the country must avoid “foreign policy autopilot”.
There is growing bipartisan support for the idea of a “whole of nation” approach to international policy.
The executive director of AP4D, Melissa Conley Tyler, told Guardian Australia that during recent consultations, some groups suggested climate change required a whole-of-nation approach because it was an existential threat and “we just can’t afford to have different parts of society doing different things”.
Another group saw a whole-of-nation approach as an opportunity for Australia: “Think about how much better our international engagement would be if you took the views of multicultural Australia into account, if you really involved First Nations peoples, if you thought about civil society and what they offer.”
Key events
With the co-ed issue front and centre in New South Wales today, Elle Hunt has taken a critical look at the campaign by some parents at posh boy’s school Newington in Sydney’s inner west to stop it admitting girls.
She’s less than sympathetic with the parents, it’s fair to say, as they complain about the “woke palaver” that has brought us to this point.
She writes:
To listen to these old boys’ inarticulate defence of “traditional values”, you can’t help but think they’re really misty-eyed about a time when men’s dominance in public and political life passed without challenge. But times have changed, as Newington’s board is recognising.
Read her whole piece here:
Dutton denies backing tax changes is a ‘humiliation’
The federal opposition took a pragmatic approach in deciding to back the government’s changes to stage three tax cuts because people are hurting, Peter Dutton says.
The leader also denied it was humiliating to have to stand in favour of Labor’s changes – which will shave the tax relief offered to high income earners to the policy created by the previous coalition government, Australian Associated Press reports.
“We stood up because we want to see people given assistance,” Dutton told ABC TV last night.
“It addresses some of the damage that Labor has done to the economy and the cost-of-living pressures are really acute for families, so we listened to that and we acted.”
Dutton also rejected suggestions prime minister Anthony Albanese should get credit for taking a political risk and altering the cuts.
“They did this with the Dunkley election contest in mind,” he said, referring to the upcoming by-election in the Victorian electorate which Labor faces a tough battle to retain.
This week, Albanese has taken the opposition to task for railing against the tax cut changes before eventually capitulating.
“(The opposition) have described our policy to give tax cuts to every Australian in the following terms: an egregious error, a betrayal, trickery, absolutely shameful, class warfare,” he told parliament yesterday.
Australia must avoid ‘foreign policy autopilot’, thinktank report says
Daniel Hurst
The climate crisis and the rise of China should spur Australia to get smarter with its statecraft, according to a report to be published today.
The paper, produced by the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue (AP4D) thinktank, will be launched by Labor’s Penny Wong and the Coalition’s Simon Birmingham in Canberra this morning.
It suggests Australia’s engagement with the world cannot be left solely to the departments of foreign affairs and defence, and the country must avoid “foreign policy autopilot”.
There is growing bipartisan support for the idea of a “whole of nation” approach to international policy.
The executive director of AP4D, Melissa Conley Tyler, told Guardian Australia that during recent consultations, some groups suggested climate change required a whole-of-nation approach because it was an existential threat and “we just can’t afford to have different parts of society doing different things”.
Another group saw a whole-of-nation approach as an opportunity for Australia: “Think about how much better our international engagement would be if you took the views of multicultural Australia into account, if you really involved First Nations peoples, if you thought about civil society and what they offer.”
Caitlin Cassidy
NSW deputy premier and minister for education and early learning Prue Car said work was ongoing to ensure all parents had access to co-educational high schools by 2027.
The catchments of current single-sex high schools will remain unchanged.
Car said:
There is growing interest in co-education, and no family should have to face leaving their local area to access a co-educational high school.
Member for Summer Hill, Jo Haylen, said for years, families in her constituency could only opt for the single sex Ashfield and Canterbury high schools if they were to go public.
Life is co-ed, and parents and students should have access to a co-ed school option.
Caitlin Cassidy
Sydney public high schools to go co-ed in Labor shake-up as parents face tough choices
The New South Wales government is to announce a major shake-up of school intake boundaries that will grant thousands of families in Sydney access to co-educational public high schools for the first time.
Prior to the state election, Chris Minns pledged parents would have guaranteed access to co-educational public schools within Labor’s first term of government.
The changes, to roll out from next year, finalise updates to intake areas previously flagged in Sydney suburbs across parts of the inner west and south-west, where students only have a single-sex public high school option.
The final intake areas across NSW will have a co-educational option by 2027.
The NSW Department of Education confirmed the boundaries will be adjusted for 20 co-educational high schools – following feedback with more than 120 schools and their staff, parents and students.
Welcome
Martin Farrer
Good morning and welcome to our rolling politics blog, in this first parliamentary sitting week of 2024. I’m Martin Farrer and I’ll be rounding up the best of the overnight stories before Amy joins the fray.
Today we reveal how staff at the Human Rights Commission are pushing back against what they see as the organisation’s soft line towards Israel. Staff across eight of the Australian Human Rights Commission’s teams – at least 24 of the 122 staff employed – have written to the commission’s president, Rosalind Croucher, about what they say is a “failure to fulfil its mandate as an accredited national human rights institution: in regard to Israeli war crimes”.
School principals have joined the teachers’ union in demanding that the Albanese government boost its offer to co-fund the gap in public school finances with states. The Australian Education Union, leaders of all major principals’ organisations and the Australian Council of State School Organisations have written to the prime minister demanding the federal government pay at least a quarter of the cost of fair public school funding. The issue of co-ed schools will be big news in New South Wales this morning when ministers announce a major shake-up of school intake boundaries that will grant thousands of families in Sydney access to mixed public high schools for the first time. More on that coming up.
Papua New Guinea’s prime minister, James Marape, will this morning become the first Pacific leader to address Australia’s parliament, and he is expected to talk up the relationship between the two nations. Last year Albanese became the first foreign leader to address PNG’s parliament. The pair will meet again today when Marappe receives a ceremonial welcome at Parliament House before addressing a joint sitting of senators and MPs.
It comes as a thinktank report will be launched by the foreign minister, Penny Wong, and the Coalition’s Simon Birmingham in Canberra this morning calling for Australia to get smarter with its statecraft to counter the rising power of China. More on that, too, coming up.
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