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ESSENTIALS
- Parliament’s flashpoint this week is child safety, algorithms and censorship.
- Defense officials heading for Senate estimates showdown.
- Inside QLD Premier’s Silicon Valley tour parading National Cabinet data center win.
DRIVING THE DAY
DIGITAL DUTY OF CARE LEGISLATION COMING
The scene is set for a divisive debate about Labor’s digital duty of care legislation this week — will it help children, enable censorship, or both?
The government is yet to unveil the legislation in full but details are steadily leaking, including that it would introduce an opt-out model for algorithms on social media feeds, as David Speers reported.
The pressure has been ratcheting up after a series of shocking sexual assault allegations in NSW involving teen boys. The Minns government convened an emergency roundtable on Friday to discuss the wave of violence, which it suspects is fed by hateful online content.
Biggest point of contention: Should the law require opting in to an algorithm or merely allow users to opt out of it? Opting in is the more extreme measure, but according to advocates it’s also much more likely to be effective. Case in point: how many of you reject “cookies” when given the opt-out, which brings the risk of reduced functionality on a website?
If the Coalition won’t support the bill, Labor could choose to win Greens support by moving to an opt-in model.
Burdens on tech companies: The legislation would also require social media companies to mitigate risks and reduce the sharing of harmful content, including specific psychosocial harms that affect kids (think posts about body image and bullying). News24’s Andrew Clennell also reported companies could cop $100 million penalties for failing to comply.
Angus Taylor is skeptical: He says this could be an attempt at censorship, and thinks it’s more important to bolster teen social media restrictions. An amendment to social media laws to impose harsher fines and give eSafety more power is working its way through parliamentary committees. Sen. Jonno Duniam, the Opposition’s home affairs spokesperson, said he’s open to an opt-out algorithm model provided it “doesn’t unnecessarily impede on people’s rights and freedoms.”
One Orwellian Nation: Rather than giving Australians choices, Sen. Pauline Hanson sees government intervention in algorithms as “building the Orwellian machinery” for government censorship.
Talk about a farewell tour: Duniam, who soft launched his departure from Parliament in June, now says he’ll be gone in the next “month or two,” but keeps piling up his calendar, first with finalizing the Coalition’s immigration policy, then work on the new AI committee and now digital duty of care.
BURNING FOR ATTENTION: Angus Taylor’s follow-up to the Coalition’s tobacco policy is a proposed federal criminal offense for burning or otherwise desecrating the Australian flag. It took no time at all to attract questions about undercutting One Nation.
Playbook’s question: Is Taylor angling to use this measure as a bargaining chip, or cover, during the next round of legislative negotiations with Labor?
CAN FOSTER CARE FIX HOME AFFAIRS?
Shedding hundreds of roles through voluntary redundancies this year, Secretary Stephanie Foster has reshaped the Home Affairs mega-department significantly since taking on the top job three years ago, reports Miriam Webber. (See how the department looked in 2024 compared with today.)
An intelligence division is disbanded in a move intended “to better align intelligence functions with operational areas,” and the department also moved “relevant capabilities to more directly support the requirements of the Australian Border Force and immigration planning and operations,” a spokesperson told Playbook.
Foster’s era is also focusing on culture shifts: The department is notorious for low morale, but staff census results have improved significantly under Foster. Seventy-two percent of staff said it was a good place to work in 2025, compared with 57 percent in 2023.
While the results have come with breakthrough pay rises across the APS, they also mark a shift away from a “command-and-control” leadership style under original Home Affairs boss Mike Pezzullo, who was sacked in 2023 for breaching the APS Code of Conduct 14 times.
Foster, then associate secretary, was elevated into the top job at speed — a practice that senior public servants now say they prefer to avoid in favour of competitive selection processes.
Is Home Affairs on the right track? Write in.
THE PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW
JOHN MCKECHNIE – DON’T BLAME CORRUPTION COMMISSIONS FOR LEGISLATIVE “STRAITJACKETS”
The Australian Public Sector Anti-Corruption Conference comes to Canberra this week, hosted by the National Anti-Corruption Commission. The keynote will be delivered by former W.A. Corruption and Crime Commissioner McKechnie, who defends Paul Brereton, the recently resigned NACC chief.
Miriam Webber spoke to him over the phone ahead of the conference.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
What will your key message be?
Australia is fortunate. It scores very low on the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index. Every state and territory, and of course nationally, has an anti-corruption body of some sort with very strong powers.
So the people who work in the integrity area deserve thanks — it’s often a thankless job.
The NACC is in a state of transition, with a new commissioner and deputy commissioner yet to be announced. What should it be doing to restore public trust and what should the federal government be doing?
Every anti-corruption commission will go through stages where people want it to do more, want it to do different things [and] take directions from interested bodies.
An anti-corruption body receives hundreds — if not thousands — of allegations every year. Most matters are returned to the departments from which they come for the department to deal with. For the NACC to do an investigation requires significant resources. It’s set up to do that, but it can only do a certain number a year.
Should the NACC hold more public hearings to restore or gain trust?
That presupposes that it’s in the NACC’s power. Politicians draft the acts and if you go through the acts around Australia, some of them are incredibly restrictive as to when you can hold a public hearing.
So it’s not up to NACC to say, “We’ll hold more public hearings.” Their legislation makes the circumstances, where they can, quite restrictive.
It’s unfair to blame a corruption commission for the rules, the straitjackets, the hurdles that politicians have chosen to put into the exercise of power.
So, do you believe the impact of Paul Brereton’s resignation, media scrutiny and commentary from politicians has been overblown in terms of how that’s affected trust in the NACC?
Yes. He was a highly respected Court of Appeal judge in New South Wales, a highly respected army officer, and the term is only five years anyway.
If you look around the various anti-corruption commissions over the years, you’ll find not many commissioners last five years, or certainly much further.
I know in Western Australia, until I took over, in the first 15 years of its existence, no commissioner had served a full term. It’s a very high-powered job and it takes its toll.
STATE OF THE NATION
PLANET DEFENSE: We don’t know what is going on over the Defense Department, but if officials there keep messing with senators, we are in for an almighty showdown at the next round of Senate estimates.
Q&A is “like some kind of dental surgery”: James Paterson was already on the rampage, sending a clear warning via Playbook about what he considers to be deliberate obfuscation by officials in response to his questions.
Next up, on Friday we had Greens Sen. David Shoebridge needing to tell Celia Perkins, a deputy secretary at the department, that he’ll post whatever he feels like about their public evidence to committees after she attempted to warn him off social media posts.
Perkins at one point described Shoebridge’s lines of questioning as “distressing.” Shoebridge shot back that getting simple answers out of the department was “like some kind of dental surgery.”
MOVE OVER MYERS-BRIGGS: The Australian Communications and Media Authority has categorized seven types of Australians according to their news habits, in a report that dropped quietly last week.
News neutrals: The highest-represented group at 23 percent. They consume 6.5 hours a week on average (on the lower end), mostly from online sources (primarily social media). They see news as simply a way to stay up to date, not a top priority.
Trusting traditionalists: Make up the next greatest chunk (20 percent). These are the older, highly engaged Australians who largely get their news from free-to-air TV and radio.
So, how do you reach people? Those who are less engaged want more balanced, less-sensational and less-distressing news. That includes more solutions-focused coverage. News hounds want a greater diversity of perspectives, more depth in reporting, transparent editorial practices and restoring strong local news.
Everyone wants: Clearer labeling of fact versus opinion and reduced restrictive paywalls.
Communication Minister Anika Wells says: “Australians value news that’s relevant to them.”
“Local news outlets are vital in keeping communities informed and ensuring Australian stories are told to Australian audiences.” More from Wells in our Playbook feedback section.
USEFUL — NOM SIMULATOR: Economist Cameron Murray created a tool to check what level of net overseas migration would result from a given set of policy choices. Try it here.
PARTY ROOM
LIBERAL — TAYLOR’S THEORY OF AUSTRALIAN DECLINE: The Liberal leader is mad and he’s going to give 3,586-word speeches about it. What’s notable about this one is how Taylor has tried to wrap his grievances into a case to reverse what he sees as both economic and cultural decline.
“Criminal gangs will be rooted out. Visa overstayers will be booted out. Extremists will be kept out. Radical protests will be snuffed out. And antisemitism will be stamped out.”
ONE NATION — TAKING OVER THE HUNTER AND LABOR MPs CAN’T FIGURE OUT WHY: “People can’t articulate to me what they want the government to do tomorrow, and they can’t articulate to me why they hate the government today,” MP Clayton Barr told Max Maddison.
“Most of my mates work in coal mines. They have good jobs, beautiful wives, their kids have gotten a good start in life. They have no debt, a couple of cars in the shed, caravans and take yearly overseas holidays — and they’re going to vote for One Nation,” Barr said. “If you’re saying that politicians are all shit, how has the system not worked for you?”
LABOR — HOW THE LEFT WANTS TO FIGHT ONE NATION: A speech by the NSW Left faction’s top party official George Simon on how to tackle One Nation pins Gen X as One Nation’s new generational base.
Quotable: Labor’s vote share in polls might be languishing in the high 20s but there’s also opportunity, “It’s quite discombobulating to be considering targeting both Cessnock and Willoughby,” Simon notes. And he sees value in how New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani leads via “tonal radicalism paired with incremental reform.”
MIRROR, MIRROR: Bernard Keane on why Victorian Labor and NSW Liberals are victims (or perpetrators?) of the same political problem.
BY THE NUMBERS
24.9 percent: Proportion of electric vehicles sales, which overtook sales of petrol cars for the first time in Australia in August. More than 27,000 battery electric vehicles were sold, a 171 percent increase on the same month last year.
CANBERRA MEETS WORLD
QUEENSLAND MEETS SILICON VALLEY
What happens when two self-labeled utopias unite, or go head-to-head?
Queensland Premier David Crisafulli wasted no time taking his National Cabinet win — which will allow him to fuel massive new data centers with fossil fuels — straight to Silicon Valley, where he met Anthropic’s Jeff Bleich, the company international “special envoy,” and David Masters, Anthropic’s head of policy for Australia last week.
That meeting came after Richard Marles and Andrew Charlton pushed the national clean energy vision for data centers with Anthropic, also last week.
The Queenslanders got straight into data center details, according to Playbook’s sources in the room. Namely, how to bring your own energy requirements, so the facilities aren’t competing with households for power, and that “closed-loop cooling” should be employed to minimize water use.
They also discussed skilling initiatives and QLD public service adoption of artificial intelligence.
AFR reported that Crisafulli has been pitching QLD as a critical minerals hub directly to the Trump administration, bringing leaders from five companies to meet finance agencies and government departments in Washington on Wednesday. POLITICO reported that Democrats have exactly this sort of minerals deal in their sights should they take back the House of Representatives in November midterm elections.
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING
GERMANY’S FAR-RIGHT FIRE WALL ON THE VERGE OF COLLAPSE: Under 35-year-old lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund, the far-right AfD polled around 45 percent in the Saxony-Anhalt state election. Latest results here.
The far-right party most likely needed 50 percent to gain control of the state parliament, because other parties are determined not to work in coalition with AfD. But POLITICO’s Marc Felix Serrao writes that German political parties now need to face a world where their attempts to keep AfD out of power may no longer work.
FARAGE AND REFORM UK — A STATESMAN/SCANDAL SPLIT SCREEN
A dodgy money scandal hijacked Nigel Farage’s reset conference, and he spent all weekend in defensive mode, including on BBC, and op-eds in The Sun on Sunday and The Telegraph.
Catch up: A major investigation published by U.K.’s Channel 4 news has forced the resignation of two top Reform UK advisers: Dan Jukes, a comms adviser who positioned himself as Nigel Farage’s future chief of staff, and James Orr, the head of policy that U.S. Vice President JD Vance has called his “British sherpa.”
The investigation revealed hidden sources of polling funding and purported to show Reform UK leader Farage and Jukes suggesting a way to get around electoral law to secure a $940,000 foreign donation for the party. In a BBC interview Farage downplayed his role in the meetings which enabled all this: “I frankly wasn’t even listening.”
Warning flag for One Nation: Reform’s annual conference is over and instead of focusing on how they plan to save and run the U.K., they spent large chunks of time defending and explaining how they govern themselves.
Analysis — Farage as statesman will require distance from Trump: Farage is trying to recast Reform UK as a government-in-waiting, signing a migration deal with French far-right leader Jordan Bardella at his party conference.
New research shows that British voters want tough immigration policies without Trump-style chaos over Ukraine, Iran and the economy. Yet Farage has long cultivated and promoted his strong MAGA connections and that’s a problem for Reform.
Martyrs or criminals? British officials will now have a tightrope to walk as they ponder whether to take action after the TV exposé. Bob Posner, a lawyer and former CEO at the U.K. Electoral Commission, said there should now be a criminal investigation.
The political question then arises: Do repeated investigations and attempted prosecutions reflect rule of law at work, or do they become a way to silence voters by other means?
INDONESIA — OFFERS TO BE RUSSIA’S GATEWAY TO ASEAN: At the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto pitched his country as Russia’s gateway to Southeast Asia, a market of 680 million. The Straits Times reports Subianto is pushing for closer trade, investment and transport links.
President Xi’s new speech on international order: It lacks the zingers of Mark Carney’s Davos speech, which may be why few people noticed it on Thursday, including Playbook, but is worth the read for those who follow Chinese influence.
— Xi treats the decline of a U.S.-dominated system as fact, rather than a Beijing project.
— Rule of law and equality are state-to-state concepts, rather than individual rights — which helps to explain that the Global South is Xi’s real audience for the speech.
— He calls for “partnerships rather than alliances” — which also makes sense if you want to built transactional rather than hard-to-manage values-based relationships like NATO and AUKUS.
— Technology, like infrastructure before it, is becoming part of China’s diplomatic offer.
DUTCH MOVE 86 TONS OF GOLD OUT OF AMERICA: The central bank of the Netherlands has taken the gold out of New York and Ottawa over the past few months — dropping the share of its gold held there from 51 percent to 37 percent — and moved it to the Bank of England in central London.
De Nederlandsche Bank said in a statement the removal aimed to boost the country’s “crisis preparedness” amid “increasing geopolitical unrest.”
Playbook Feedback
Communications Minister Annika Wells tells Playbook “It’s never been more important for people to think critically about what they see online. That’s why we are developing Australia’s first ever national media literacy strategy and have invested $6 million in the Alannah & Madeline Foundation to teach future POLITICO readers how to discern what they read online.”
LOCAL CANBERRA
HISTORY OF THE TROUGH: The Museum of Australian Democracy (located in Old Parliament House) is working on its next exhibition to show off the history of parliamentary catering. The exhibition will be in the original main kitchen, first opened in 1927. It’s still being cooked up though and won’t be open until after March 2027. MoAD is looking for joiners to put it all together.
Playbook feedback: Tell us what you think about “The Trough” as the nickname for Parliament’s staff dining room. Staff in Speaker Milton Dick’s office are defenders of the venue’s official name because neither the staff nor dining room patrons are pigs, after all.
COMMUNITY CORNER
DADS CAUCUS LAUNCHES IN PARLIAMENT: Movember has created a cross-party group (you might have seen their posters in local cafes) that’s working to support more Dads to take up their paid parental leave entitlements.
They’ll be hosting a Father’s Day celebration today featuring The Wiggles’ Lachlan Gillespie and Joel Phillips and his son Miles, who will perform their smash hit “Eastern Rosellas” on Parliament House lawns at 9 a.m.
They have the backing of MPs including Ged Kearney, Dan Repacholi, Jerome Laxale, Josh Burns, Peter Khalil and Matt Thistlethwaite on the government side, and Aaron Violi from the Liberals.
BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Who better to recommend a book to Playbook readers, than one who’s published 13 of them. Andrew Leigh recommends “Traversal” by Maria Popova.
MOVES AND APPOINTMENTS
Jamie Snashall has established Darned Advisory, he’s a former adviser to Mark Butler and Julia Gillard.
Sebastian Brash is now head of innovation and industry policy at Tech Council of Australia.
Peter Jean has returned to the Canberra Times after a 12-year break.
Maria Alves is now an assistant secretary in the infrastructure department.
Jennifer Noble has been promoted to assistant secretary of policy and program management at DFAT.
Kirsty Bailey is now general manager of digital services for business in the industry department.
James O’Brien is the Bureau of Meteorology’s new general manager for organisational development.
BIRTHDAYS
Zoya Sheftalovich, POLITICO’s Australian stalwart and now chief EU correspondent; Monika Wheeler, CEO, Healthy North Coast.