Welcome to Paul Karp, who joins us today as Canberra Playbook editor from the Australian Financial Review, and Amanda Copp, who joins from Nine, our Canberra Playbook correspondent and the host of our new podcast launching in October.
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ESSENTIALS
— Do you know anyone who believes the Treasury’s long-term projections?
— Government doubles the defense post-service recall period to 10 years
— Big Tech joins High Court challenge to teen social media restrictions
— The government’s EV spying problem
DRIVING THE DAY
ANTHROPIC INVESTMENTS IN SCIENCE: The frontier AI company is announcing a large partnership in Australian science, deep tech and research this morning.
BIG APPLE MEMO: U.S.-China trade and AI talks have commenced ahead of President Xi Jinping’s Washington dialogue with President Donald Trump on Thursday. An AI dialogue has been established, aiming for a notification mechanism for national security incidents involving AI.
Anthony Albanese will attend a Partners for Multilateralism, International Law, Peace and Prosperity summit at 8:30 a.m. Canberra time, convened by European Council President António Costa, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Kenyan President William Ruto.
As we head to bed, Albanese will co-host an event with France’s Emmanuel Macron, Spain’s Pedro Sánchez and Ruto on expanding a coalition promoting child rights around AI.
If you want to watch Albo receive his Global Citizen Award from the Atlantic Council (on Thursday morning Canberra time), you will need to register for livestream.
GENERATIONAL CHALM OFFENSIVE
Treasurer Jim Chalmers will do a round of interviews selling the intergenerational report, arguing that the Albanese government’s policies put it on the right side of history in “dangerous” and “unpredictable” times.
In his Monday speech Chalmers noted accelerating change is causing political division. Everyone feels the strain, but there is a difference between “those who prey on it and pick at it, politicize and catastrophise it — and those who seek to alleviate it,” he said.
No pain, no gain: The problem for Chalmers is that so many of the policies Labor thinks will set Australia up for long-term gain also come with short-term pain. The government answered intergenerational inequity and the fading dream of home ownership with tax changes to favor owner-occupiers over investors. But home price decreases scare those already in the market.
On migration, the predicament seems to be the opposite: what the public say they want in the short-term (a decrease in net overseas migration) the intergenerational report suggests would make us poorer, because migration helps economic growth and makes up for falling native-born fertility.
MPs like to think long term — but they don’t believe the predictions. Read our story.
A baby bonus is a stale, ineffective idea — and the report says so. Commentators reach for it because it responds to a demand that the government make people’s lives easier. Jim’s pitch risks falling flat because he’s both pushing harder long-term reforms, while avoiding the radical retooling of the economy many voters say they want.
Bureaucrats out of bedrooms: “I’m a bit different to Peter Costello in the sense that I don’t tell people how to make choices about how many kids they have,” Chalmers told “7.30” last night. “I see that as a deeply personal decision.”
Hedging his bubs: “I’m pretty open-minded about it … although economists and people who know are mixed about their views on whether that actually worked,” said Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie.
POLITICO FILES LAWSUIT AGAINST WHITE HOUSE: CEO Goli Sheikholeslami emailed staff Monday night: “Alongside CNN and MS NOW, we have notified the government that we are jointly filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes.”
And major American television networks are declining to participate in White House pool duties moving forward in response to the Trump administration’s decision.
STATE OF THE NATION
DEFENCE EXTENDS RECALL PERIOD
The government has quietly doubled the number of years personnel leaving service can be called upon by the governor-general during times of war or other defense emergencies.
Permanent ADF members who leave the force enter a period with the reserves — with no obligations — but can be recalled under special circumstances set out in the Defence Act.
Up until now, this was five years, but from Oct. 1 it will be 10 years for people who enlist as permanent ADF members or who transfer to the reserves. The same for new directly recruited reserves.
The change responds to a recommendation from a 2024 review into the reserves and follows a similar move by the U.K. government in January.
Miriam Webber has the full story here.
HOW DIFFERENT GENERATIONS REACTED TO THE INTERGENERATIONAL REPORT
We sprayed a group of MPs and senators with our questions on the intergenerational report.
Highlights of how the different generations responded:
20s: Australia’s 22-year-old Sen. Charlotte Walker and team had better things to do than respond to POLITICO’s survey.
30s: Independent Sen. Fatima Payman — “A 40-year projection isn’t really helpful when you don’t know what [President] Trump will do in the next 40 hours.”
40s: Opposition treasury spokesperson Tim Wilson on the fertility rate — “Deeply worrying because of what it means for the preservation of our society and culture, as well as the economic consequences.”
50s: Independent MP Monique Ryan on the report’s blind spots — “[It] significantly underestimates the complex economic risks of climate change. Water resources, pollution, and the demand on infrastructure from a growing population are not covered in detail.”
Labor Minister Andrew Leigh — Found the fertility numbers challenging: “points to the importance of productivity.”
Independent MP Kate Chaney on what the report doesn’t factor in — “The decline in human connection and increase in mental ill-health is not measured well but has a huge impact on our happiness.”
One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce’s take — “Amusing reading if you are stuck on a bus … I don’t quite understand how they put out these ridiculous reports with their heroic assumptions that are completely at odds with our obvious reality. If your fundamentals are wacky the report is rubbish.”
60s: Independent MP Helen Haines on the planning that needs to happen now — “Regional Australia has a vital role to play in the country’s future prosperity. We feed the nation, power major industries, host renewable energy and welcome new families. But we cannot realise that potential if regional Australia continues to be held back.”
70s and 80s: No one got back to us.
MPs FREE TO DRIVE EV MODELS ASIO WARNS ARE SURVEILLANCE PLATFORMS: Sarah Ison for The Australian dives into how, despite warnings from ASIO against ministers such as Don Farrell, Tony Burke and Chris Bowen having sensitive conversations in their EVs, six Chinese-made EVs are on the list of car models available to MPs.
TALK GLOBAL, ACT LOCAL — THE DATA CENTER SPLIT SCREEN
The PM wants deals and adulation from the biggest tech companies in the world. The Greens are determined to make him pay a price at the most local level, by latching onto the physical representation of AI: suburban data centers.
Pain Cove: A parliamentary inquiry into data centers and AI kicks off at 10:30 a.m. in Lane Cove, Sydney, where it’ll hear from locals pushing back against data centers in their area. Catch up on that drama via Lucy Slade in AFR.
“The local community is furious, they feel like they’ve been ignored,” Greens Sen. and committee Chair Sarah Hanson-Young told reporters Monday. That may be so, but Playbook’s Paul Karp has visited the site, and found it to be consistent with existing data centers in the area, and whisper quiet.
Keen Greens: The Greens want to talk about this AI committee because it’s the one they’re actually allowed on. They were cut out of a more important joint select committee after Leader Larissa Waters rejected an ultimatum from Labor: Pick any Greens representative, just not AI spokesperson David Shoebridge.
How many AI inquiries is too many?: We’ve had the Senate Select Committee on Adopting Artificial Intelligence (2024), the inquiry into the use and governance of artificial intelligence systems by public sector entities (2024), and now the S.A. royal commission into artificial intelligence. If that’s not enough, there are 111 other parliamentary inquiries underway.
Give us your best: Send nominations for the collective noun for AI inquiries.
Worth the read: Australian academic Kate Crawford mapped the physical consequences of AI (among other things) in her groundbreaking “Atlas of AI.”
Scrap the scrape? You’re delusional, Turnbull says: The AI companies will take Australian content regardless, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says. The question is whether we want some money for it, or not.
TRIPLE ZERO OUTAGES — NATIONALIZE THE SYSTEM
That’s what Greens Sen. Sarah Hanson-Young wants, after a committee she chaired into a series of deadly Triple Zero outages handed down its report. “What we’re saying: cut out the middle person, the corporate body that has been putting profits ahead of people’s safety for too long,” Hanson-Young said. Telstra — which was government owned when the system was established in the 1960s — kept control even after full privatization.
The catch: Telstra has a $20 million per year contract to operate the system, which runs until 2032. Implementing the recommendation will mean either a court case or a payout.
Hanson-Young also wants a review into the regulator, ACMA, labeled a “lapdog” not “guard dog.”
Easy as ACCC: The competition regulation is running an inquiry into the telecommunications system, including whether domestic roaming should be mandated. That’s due to run until mid-next year. The Triple Zero Custodian, which Labor set up last year, will deliver its own report in March.
Do you spot the pattern, dear readers? Canberra is drowning in inquiries.
BRAIN FOOD — THE LEARNING STATE: Andrew Leigh will today deliver the “Shann Lecture,” the WA Economic Society’s flagship address, where he will release the results of a Department of Employment and Workplace Relations randomized trial involving almost 40,000 job seekers.
“Government should get better at learning from what it does,” Leigh will say. The Australian Centre for Evaluation, part of Treasury, is helping build a “learning state” through the use of more randomized trials, he said.
Case in point: Fewer mutual-obligation requirements resulted in less stress for job seekers, but not worse employment, earnings or time in work outcomes, Leigh will say.
What did work? Text message prompts. A Services Australia randomized trial showed that a text message before a phone call lifted successful contact rates from 52 to 64 per cent, saving taxpayers millions in employment support costs.
BY THE NUMBERS
2% plummet: Some News Corp. journalists were in a head spin Monday. … The autocue said Labor’s vote was plummeting, but then when the words “2% drop” followed, the headline wasn’t sustainable. Words like “small” also followed.
19%: The level of party support Coalition Leader Angus Taylor needs in his pocket to go on air saying Labor is “on the nose.”
1%: The average drop in Coalition support since Taylor became leader in February. “Well, you’ve seen improvement in the support for me as leader and you’re seeing improvement in many polls for the Coalition,” Taylor insisted.
Reality check: Taylor consistently trails Albanese and Pauline Hanson as preferred PM in multiple polls. The Coalition remains in dire straits.
CANBERRA MEETS WORLD
BIG TECH URGES HIGH COURT TO STRIKE DOWN SOCIAL MEDIA LAW
Albo is in NYC bragging about Australia’s digital leadership, but the High Court challenge to Australia’s teen restrictions just won heavy new backers, Paul Karp reports.
NetChoice, a U.S. peak body for social media companies including those targeted by the new law — Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads), Twitch, TikTok, Reddit, Snapchat, X and YouTube — and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represents users, have joined Reddit’s challenge.
Australia has an implied freedom of political communication, not an explicit guarantee of free speech in the style of the U.S. First Amendment, used to halt similar age-based restrictions or bans — including in California, Florida, Georgia and Ohio.
NetChoice argues that “legislative responses have outrun the empirical evidence” around harm to minors, and said Australia’s law is poorly targeted. Its court submission noted the existence of less restrictive alternatives to a total ban, such as: parental controls, limits on or warnings about screen time, or banning specific features like endless feeds and time-limited content.
The Albanese government has separately proposed a “digital duty of care” — legislation mandating platform users be offered a choice over whether to receive an algorithmic feed, or one limited to their own friends and connections.
UNPACKING AUSTRALIA’S SECURITY COUNCIL BID
Welcome to the world’s longest, and least consequential election.
Australia is so far running uncontested for a temporary U.N. Security Council seat in 2029 and 2030; there’s only one other candidate (Finland) for the two seats available. The vote will happen after the next federal election, in June 2028. And while it’s better to be on the council than not, as the prime minister himself said Sunday: PIF and ASEAN are where Australia can exert real deep influence.
The most interesting part of the campaign is the Trump rebuke: “Australia is seeking a seat because a safer world is one governed by rules, not by power and force alone.”
Fact check: The U.N. Security Council may officially be “the world’s principal body for the maintenance of international peace and security,” but no one who operates in geopolitics believes that to be true in practice, and it’s been that way since at least 2003, when the U.S. deliberately went around the council to invade Iraq.
Good line: “An active and ambitious middle power,” is how Foreign Minister Penny Wong described Australia.
Missing line: We read with interest Latika Bourke’s story for The Nightly, that while lecturing the world on Australians’ inability to locate the Strait of Hormuz on a map, Anthony Albanese misnamed it the Gulf of Hormuz. Not that you’d know it from the transcript. If you’ve ever wondered what the cryptic acronym E&OE means, it stands for “errors and omissions excepted.” The bigger the screw up, the quicker they come out.
But if the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario can make way for the Gulf of and Lake America, what’s a little geographical license between allies?
FOUR NEW SENIOR DIPLOMATIC APPOINTMENTS: Three are career diplomats, one is an external appointment. None are to the Gulf of Hormuz.
Jamie Isbister, a career diplomat, replaces Ewen McDonald as Australia’s high commissioner to Papua New Guinea, point person for the Pukpuk Alliance. He has been Australia’s ambassador for the environment and its humanitarian coordinator.
Joel McGregor, another career diplomat, is Australia’s next ambassador to Egypt, Eritrea and Sudan, replacing Axel Wabenhorst.
Lucienne Manton will be Australia’s next ambassador to Timor-Leste, having served as Ambassador to counter modern slavery, people smuggling and human trafficking. She replaces Caitlin Wilson.
Siobhan McKenna — the chair of Australia Post and formerly Lachlan Murdoch’s top aide — is Australia’s next consul-general in New York. The current post-holder is Heather Ridout, and recent consuls-general include ex-Liberal politicians Mitch Fifield and Nick Grenier.
TECH-FACILITATED GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE — NEW CALL FOR ACTION: Leaders including eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, whose Safety By Design framework is seen as a global best practice, are calling on governments to mandate a duty of care requiring the tech sector to build safety into the design, development and deployment of technology from the outset, rather than as an afterthought.
Only around 12 per cent of countries have legislation addressing cyber sexual harassment.
Read Playbook’s interview with expert Julie Posetti around how online attacks do not remain online.
PARTY ROOM
LIBERALS AND ONE NATION: S.A. Liberal President Alex Antic is open in his belief that some form of power-sharing arrangement with One Nation is inevitable. “There is going to have to be some sort of understanding … in order to form government,” Antic told Reality Check Radio, which produces documentaries railing against vaccine mandates and fluoride.
LABOR — Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy Josh Wilson has joined the “Get off my chest” campaign, which is pushing his beloved Fremantle Dockers to ditch their Woodside Petroleum sponsorship. Full story from The Australian’s Will Glasgow here.
LOCAL CANBERRA
TWO WONGS MAKE A RIGHT — THE MAKING OF MULTICULTURAL CANBERRA: One family’s contribution to building a much more interesting city.
WINE DAY OUT: Local vineyards will offer free tastings at Fyshwick Markets this Saturday between noon to 3 p.m. Expect all the classics, like Clonakilla and Nick O’Leary, as well as boutique brands like Linear.
Then: Send us your Canberra region winery reviews.
COMMUNITY CORNER
GOOD NEWS FOR GYM RATS: “Aging gym equipment will be upgraded” on Oct. 7-8. That explains the timing for the yoga with a view, below.
YOGA ON THE PARLIAMENT ROOF: “In recognition of World Mental Health Day” there will be a “Yoga on the Roof session” Oct. 7 at 5:15 p.m. Free for gym members, $13.45 for everyone else.
Now … if we could just get back to being allowed to roll down the Parliament House hill, that would be the real win for everyone’s mental health.
MOVES AND APPOINTMENTS
COMEDY TO CAMPAIGNS: Comedian and ABC talking head Dan Ilic will become GetUp’s new chief executive, SMH’s Brittany Busch reports.
TEMPORARY PROMOTION: Greens Sen. Mehreen Faruqi is acting leader with Larissa Waters on leave. We’re told she’s “in a forest somewhere.”
HIRING: Pacific Minister Pat Conroy wants a community engagement officer for his Lake Macquarie office. One Nation is looking for a full-time receptionist and office administrator for its Brisbane office (this one’s paid!).
BIRTHDAYS
Former N.S.W. Premier Gladys Berejiklian, former Rudd-Gillard government Minister Kate Ellis, former W.A. Attorney-General Jim McGinty, Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Gold Logie winner Kerri-Anne Kennerley.